how do you read an engineers scale?

Answer 1

Engineer Scales are the following:

1" = 10 ft, 20 ft, 30 ft, 40 ft, 50 ft, or 60 ft. Depending on the scale of the map, you will have to adjust your scale accordingly. However, if your map is 1:100 then you would use 1:10 and multiply the measured length by a factor of 10.

Answer 2

It is a matter of fitting the real world on a larger or smaller piece of paper. 1/2 or Half scale means the paper or model is Half the size. That is 1 inch is 1/2 inch on paper and 10 cm are 5 cm on the model. 1/4 would be quarter scale. Some very small things are blown up 10x or ten times the real world. Some engineering rulers and cad programs have these scales built in. Like the popular 3 sided ruler with six different scales that looks complex and scary. At most you would use 2 of the scales in any one drawing. One to measure the real world and second to record a scrunched up or stretched out version of reality.

Answer 3

Since engineers are too dumb to use inches, they keep things simple. For instance, an architect will say 5' - 6". An engineer will say 5.50'. The engineer's scale is a decimal based scale, thus everything is divided into tenths.

The 10 scale breaks one inch into tenths. Thus if you have a scale of 1"=10', and you measure 3.6", the distance is 36.0 ft.
If the scale was 1"=1000', the distance would be 3600 ft. The least count is 0.10"

The 20 scale breaks one inch into twentieths, with a least count of 0.05". Thus 3.6" on the 20 scale would read 7.2. For a scale of 1"=200', that would be 720'. If the scale was 1"=20', that would be 72'.

Answer 4

Engineer scales are typically used for larger areas where architectural scales are inappropriate so once your printing area won't support 1/8" = 1' the engineer scale is put to use as it uses inches to feet not fractional inches. i.e. 1" = 40'