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Floor Plans & Facilities Center
HOW TO DRAW FLOOR PLANS (cont'd)
Why Scale Matters
Floor plans must accurately depict the sizes of real-world objects—buildings, furniture,
appliances—in relation to each other.
This requires scaling down the dimensions of all the objects by a common proportion, known as the floor plan's scale.
Scales are usually specified as a ratio, like 1:4. The first number represents units of measurement on the floor plan and the second number represents the equivalent measurement in the real world.
A scale commonly used on floor plans is 1": 48" or 1": 4'. This means that one inch on paper equals 48 inches or 4 feet in real life. This scale is also called the quarter-inch scale (1/4" : 1 foot).
SmartDraw's built-in standard floor plan templates are set to the quarter-inch scale by default (metric templates are set to a 1 cm : 0.5 m scale). If you want to change the scale, go to the Page tab and choose Scale from the Rulers & Grid group.
Under Rulers & Grid on the Page Tab you can set your scale to be something other than the custom Floor Plan scale by clicking "Scale -> Custom" or you can switch to a Metric Floor Plan by clicking on "Scale -> Floor Plan (Metric)"
