Scale boxes: measure every viewport on a sheet at its own scale

A lot of sheets carry more than one scale. A floor plan at 1/4" = 1'-0" with elevations at 3/8" and a grab bar detail at 6" on the same page. A site plan at 1" = 20' with an enlarged ramp detail at 1" = 5'. Until now a page in BidScreen Cloud held one scale, so anything you measured in the detail came out wrong. The workarounds were to re-scale the page between measurements, which changes every other quantity on it, or to duplicate the sheet.

Scale boxes fix that. Draw a box around each viewport, give the box its scale, and everything you draw inside it measures at that scale.

How to set up a scale box

• Open the Scale menu in the toolbar and pick Add scale box.
• Drag a box around the viewport: the plan, the detail, the elevation.
• Set its scale. Pick a preset like 1/4" = 1', type one in (3/8" = 1', 6" = 1', 1:100), or measure a known length inside the box.
• Repeat for each viewport on the sheet. The toolbar shows how many boxes the sheet has.

What we checked it against

We tested it on a restroom plan and details sheet. The plan's printed overall dimension is 21'-11". Traced inside the 1/4" box, it measured 21.91 LF. The stainless grab bar in the elevation is called out at 42". Traced inside the 3/8" box, it measured 3.56 LF, a hair long because the line snapped to the mounting flanges. Both lines sit in the same class on the same sheet, and the class total is the two added together.

The rules, so there are no surprises

• Drawings stay inside a box. On a sheet with boxes, a line, area or count that starts outside every box, or crosses a box edge, won't draw. You get a message saying so. That way nothing gets measured at the wrong scale by accident.
• Boxes can nest. Put a detail box inside a bigger plan box and the smallest box that holds the drawing wins.
• Drawings you already had keep their scale. If you add boxes to a sheet that already has takeoff on it, anything left outside the boxes keeps the sheet scale and gets flagged so you can find it. Nothing changes value without telling you.
• Totals follow the boxes. The Classes panel, worksheets and exports all use each box's scale.
• Boxes are rectangles. Move or resize one any time, change its scale, or delete it. Undo brings it back.
• Not on Cut/Fill sheets. Earthwork needs one scale per sheet, so scale boxes are turned off on sheets with Cut/Fill takeoff.

Try it

Scale boxes are live in BidScreen Cloud now. Log in at app.vertigraph.com, open a sheet with a detail or viewport at a different scale, and box it.