How to Produce a Scalable Building Plan From an Unscalable Plan

Have you ever wanted to scale a building plan, floor plan, or site plan and been frustrated because it was reproduced at an odd scale or none at all? Follow these easy steps which will result in a scalable and usable architectural plan.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Access to a photo copier with 11" x 17" capabilities & scaling up & down capabilities.
• Architectural Scales
• Electronic Calculator

1. Look for something on the building plan that will give you a scalable element. This could be a dimension, a room size, a garage door, etc.

2. Let's say you want the plan to be 1/8" = 1'0" - First, you will scale the known element on the original plan. For example, if the scalable element is a room and the dimension is 18'8" x 14'0" you know the room is 18 feet 8 inches wide and 14 feet long. The width is always listed first.

3. 
   Architectural Scale

   Now, take your architectural scale on the plan with the 1/8" scale facing up and scale the room. In this room, lets pretend that when you scale the room using your architectural scale it shows the width as being only 11'6" - this means that the plan is too small and needs to be enlarged.

4. 
   Calculate your Scale

   Now take your calculator and enter the actual room width in decimal format. In this case, you would enter 18.667 (you get the .667 by dividing 8/12 the room is 18'8" so you are dividing 8 inches by 12 total inches in a foot). Now divide the decimal you entered by the number that you scaled from the plan, in this instance 11.5 (again 11 feet 6 inches is 11.5 feet). The resulting number will be 1.623.

5. 
   Enlarge with Copier

   Place the original plan in a copy machine and use the enlarge function. Depending on the copy machine you are using, most will have you enter an enlarge percentage. In this case, you would turn 1.623 into a percentage and would enter 162.3%.

6. Adjust the positioning of the original on the glass as necessary to get the entire portion you would like to print and print your plan.

7. Once you have printed, check again with your architectural scale. Everything should be to scale.

Tips & Warnings

• If you need to scale your plan down, simply follow the same steps but make it smaller instead of bigger.