a site plan)ĭespite these differences in notation, the rules governing all scaled drawing are the same. engineering), and the context of the drawing (a detail vs. imperial), the profession (architecture vs. The particular convention used will depend on the standards of your country (metric vs. It can be metric or imperial, it can be a ratio with or without units, and it can be written in the format of 1:n or n:1. The scale of a drawing can be described and applied in a few different ways. We will be using examples from AutoCAD, but the same steps can be similarly applied in most CAD software. This article will help you gain an intuitive understanding of CAD scale factors and best practices for scaling design drawings.