Scale drawings

[JoeNich]

Hi,

Can anyone help me with an issue I've faced with the scale of drawings. I have imported floor plans from autocad and edited all lineweights etc using illustrator. The plans are in 1:50 scale and fit onto an A2 page, however, I need these drawings to fit onto an A3 page and maintain their scale, the only way I can see this being possible is to change the scale to 1:100, is there an easier way to do this rather than having to rescale everything on autocad and re edit all the lineweights. 

Thanks!

Joe 

[Kurt Gold]

Probably I may misunderstand your description, but I'm not quite sure about what issue you are talking.

Is it perhaps just about the stroke weights when scaling the objects? If so, you may take a look at the Transform palette flyout menu. There is an option called Scale Strokes and Effects. Is that what you are looking for or something else?

[JoeNich]

Hi, thanks for the reply 

Yes, sorry but it seems you may have misunderstood my query. I need to scale my drawings (currently on an A2 page in the  scale 1:50) to fit onto an A3 page and was wondering if there was an easier way to do this without having to re import and edit everything again.  

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Joe,

You can just scale (further) down by the desired factor, using Scale Strokes & Effects as Kurt says.

When you scale down from 1:50 to 1:100, it will fit an A4 page in exactly the same way as it now fits the A2 page.

Every increase in the A format number is a factor equalling the square root of 2, so two numbers up is a halving (0.5).

One number up is reducing to about 0.7071, so you can use that to go to A3 and get the same fit.

But obviously, with the funny scaling factor it will be more difficult to measure what you have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216#A_series

[JoeNich]

Thank you!

Do you know where I can find this tool/window and I'll see if it helps. 

[Jacob Bugge]

Joe,

To actually do it, you can simply select everything, then Object>Transform>Scale uniformly by 70.711% or 70.7107, a more exact scaling factor being 0.707106781; you can just type in as many decimals as you like.

[JoeNich]

Thanks,

This allowed the drawing to scale down when inputting 70.711%, although the drawings measurements weren't true to the 1:100 scale (e.g. a 200mm line in 1:50 scaled down to 141.42mm using the transform scale tool, rather than 100mm) 

I'll keep trying to see if I can resolve this, if not I'll do it the hard way and draw a line and try and scale the drawing to this length. 

[Jacob Bugge]

Joe,

If you wish to have it at 1:100, you can just scale down uniformly by 50% instead of 70.711%.

As I said, that 1:10 will fit exactly in the same way on an A4 page that the 1:50 fits into the A2 page; it will look the same if you see them at (the right) different distances.

On an A3 page 1:100 will give you a lot (more) of empty white paper round the floor plan(s).

And now you may know why I rote this about the 70.711% downscaling,

But obviously, with the funny scaling factor it will be more difficult to measure what you have.

because 200 mm will become 141.421 mm.

So if you wish to have the drawings at half the size (1:100 instead of 1:50) I believe it is much more convenient to use A4.

[JoeNich]

Thank you! 
That seemed to work and the drawing scaled to 1:100. I agree with you that the A4 looks and fits a lot better, although my university require either a 1:100 or 1:50 scale drawing so I will have to go with the 1:100 version. 

Thanks for the help!

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Joe.

We have just been crossposting because I elaborated my latest answer a bit.

As I (mis)understand it now, the university requires the A3 size, along with the downscaling from 1:50 to 1:100, in other words a halving.

Is it impossible to explain the inconsistency to them because a halving corresponds to the increase in A format number by 2, and get them change the paper size requirement?

As a visual aid to do that you can make a 1:100 plan on an A3 page and add a rectangle in A4 size round it (210 x 297 mm), centred on the page (with the centre at X = 148.5 and Y = 210) and add a text something like "This is how the plan will appear on an A4 page" (maybe pointing to the rectangle), then show/send it to them.

And you can add the link,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216#A_series

and specifically a link to the visualization at the top right in the Wikipedia article,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216#/media/File:PapierformateA0bisA8.jpg