Been working on a bid off of these plans, paving contractor friend discovered today they have been shrunk about 10%. 1" should = 50' not 7/8". Squak to engineer and his reply was "Oh we'll send the correct set out right away" Accident of course, Ya Right. Always watch your back side guess they wanted a 10% discount on the AB & AC
I always check the scale on the plans immediately. I do mostly architectural but it happens. Then I take a red pencil and write it on the plan 2" high so I don't forget. I have seen some labeled 3/16' and they were 1/4" . Sometimes I do site work if it is brick pavers. Wall sections and details are many times labeled wrong.
engineer's don't make mistakes ....they make revision's
I'm an engineer and I grab a scale and check before measuring every time. The CAD people just hit "print to fit". They never lay a scale to paper anymore, they just measure with their cursor. Had one today, no flippin scale at all . Had to resort to making my own paper "scale" from a known measurement. They hate to print cross sections also. "Just use the screen" .
we had a phase 1 & 2 job in a refinery.... phase 1 piping ran down the east side of the rack ... phase 2 piping ran down west side of the rack.... Needless to say they were the same pipe.... we were told to built it by the prints... so we installed the 6 runs of about 200' on each side..... then the important poeple showed up..... alot of waving and pointing... a change order to tear out one side and install about 10 feet of pipe to connect each line... sometimes I just don't get the reasoning for continuing once it's noticed on any job....
engineer? naw! engine-ear, um enginerr, unnhhh... I'm an engineer, too. It p*sses me off when you have to deal with some stuffed shirt pompous donkey's backside who figures all the guys on the floor don't know anything. I get teased a lot because I tend to call for a lot of "field fit" when we're trying to put something new in the middle of a whole lot of old stuff. But the guys doing the work understand when they've done it a couple of times and realize I respect their abilities enough to allow them to "fill in the blanks". Talk about dimensions and scales--we were building a dry kiln on a millsite a few years ago. I had a young civil engineer doing the underground and preliminary grade engineering work. He was used to working in the commercial stuff but took our work to see if he could expand his horizons. Well, the foundations were about done and it comes time to start the steel...and we are about 5" out on the foundation work. What the heck? Turns out the young feller was working in the Canadian building system--friggin metric! And the kilns were 100% feet n' inches! The elevation datum was 100--from our side, 100'-0". From his side, 100m. Thankfully, it didn't cost a lot to fix things up. That scale issue can be a bummer, too. I tell my contractors to never, never scale a drawing. Call the engineer and make him tell you the dimension. They ain't doing their job if they leave dimensions off of the drawing that you need to get the job done. And I don't care if they call him directly--I don't need to get in the middle to take the edge off a busy contractors not-so-polite request for proper information!! Wanna see a consulting engineer sweat? Give him a job where he is responsible for his screwups! For example, if his drawings are wrong, he pays towards fixing the job. I was able to get that done on a job--talk about improving the quality of the drawings!! They actually came around and measured--multiple times! It can be pretty important when you're trying to fit new stuff in an old mill. The real group I got no use for is the Architects. They go to school and get a degree in painting or basketweaving or something equally useless and then get into drawing up pretty buildings. Most of this crap is sucked up by governments or high profit businesses (like banks) to build an enormously-expensive building that could have been built a lot less costly without their "services". (Engineers have to go in after an architect does their cartoons and figure out how to build it anyway.) I was investigating building a new plant once, where the boss challenged me: "well, we're in the wood business, why the heck don't we build our buildings out of wood?" Reasonable question--the building was originally gonna be a standard steel building covered with tin. Just like a zillion shops across North America. Since the building had to be a pretty big clear span--140 feet-- it was going to be a challenge to do it in wood. I talked to an architect who was doing a lot of wood buildings. No problem, son, we can do that for under $2 million. I said thank you and hung up. We did it for just under $500,000. Found some Civil engineer types who weren't pompous windbags who quietly burnt out the bearings on their slide rules and came up with an economical design. Sorry! Rant mode: off!! Jon.
Some interesting responses to this thread...and yes, I know the types. I've run into incorrect scales when a copy of a copy is made, rather than getting an original print. Just another thing to look out for.
Joispoi, I was going to say the same thing. A copy machine is not going to print a document to scale like a plotter will. It is never a good idea to measure or digitize off a plan that has been copied. We did a test when I was digitizing site work where I worked up a copied plan to prove a point to the engineer about how it does not work. I plotted the plan the normal way (title block on right edge) and turned the plan 90 deg.(title block on bottom) and compared the volumes. There was a definite discrepancy in volume. It showed that the plan was not equally sized top -to-bottom and left-to- right after it came out of the copier. It's hard enough to get a copier to do what you want on a regular sheet of paper. Arggghhh.
Turns out the young feller was working in the Canadian building system[/B ]--friggin metric! Your Welcome ..We're shrewd ..we got by NASA also when they lost a probe on Mars ..Because we slipped the metric system in the decent calculations DOOHH!! :drinkup ..that was a biggie They didnt see that one coming .. The real group I got no use for is the Architects Truth ..If they had to put it up ..they wouldnt have designed it that way .. Spirit of the Olympic Tower in Toronto ,Ontario ..is over a 100 feet tall ,sit's on top a structure above the street another 60-75feet.. The Tower was designed to be built from the top down ... ..It was a long 3 weeks ..
What wrong with metric ? learned feet and inches at school. metric on site but can switch from one to the other ,with no hassle can even use both at the same time,but find metric more accurate and easier.
Its not the metric system ..it the human race ..not everybody is on board to the metric ..I still think in feet ..unless the charts are metric ..and thats what the other side of the tape and my calculator are for Not to mention type O's ..there are still a few people who think a pound and a kilo are one in the same ..
I'm with sawmilleng on two points. I put not to scale on all the drawings that i give to other people. If there is a dimension they need and i didn't put it on there i would rather get a call or an email than somebody try to scale it out on a bad print or copy and get it wrong. Second, Architects are at best to be tolerated, at worst berated.
I like to go by the saying "if you're scaling, you're failing".
All KDOT plans are not to correct scale we use a Planimeter all the time couldn't get by without it.
sorry but what is a planimeter? Thanks Steve
This is the one I use PLANIX EX Digitizing Coordinate Planimeter
Nice tool! does it compensate for undersized drawings?
Recently there was a $7 million judgement awarded to the contractor in our area. Between the engineers and architects who drew up the plans wrong and caused delays and cost over runs, and tried to blame it all on the contractor. (duct work to be run through structial beams and trusses in plans etc.) Caused delays for 4 or 5 years. (county vocation school project) Contractor won his case in court, now county vocational school is broke. Now want a new tax levey for their own screw up. I think the lawyers were the big winners in the case, getting around $ 3 or 4 million. Like some one made the remark that all contractors know is that water runs down hill and payday is on Fri. Thats a whole lot more than some architects and engineers know.
Yes you can scale a known distance and it will convert the scale. works with cross sections to
New set of plans, more like it
Pete Did you make sure the drawing changed, not just the scale bar? Sounds stupid until it happens to you.
I always check the scale first when I look at plans. I use a standard aluminum scale to check. For estimating I use a Scale master, it has quite a few built in scales, and you can roll a known distance to create custom scales. Saves alot of headaches. http://www.calculated.com/6/prd289/Scale+Master+Pro+Digital+Plan+Measure.html
We just had a set of drawings given to us two weeks ago that was shrunk and pretty much unreadable. We happened to have a new plotter delivered the next day. Called the engineer for the PDFs and printed the whole set off to scale in 5 mins.
Another thing I always look at first along with the scale is the date and any notes on the plans, if its issued for construction or review. Make sure you are bidding or building with the most recent and up to date drawings. Last season I excavated and prepped for foundation footings on a project. When the concrete contractor checked the subgrade elevations they were 3 inches to low. Of coarse I got a call from a very upset general contractor. Feeling really stupid at that point and trying to figure out how this happened and after spending an hour rechecking my field book, plans and setting up and rechecking grades I asked both the concrete and general contractor to see their plans. Guess what? I had not been giving the most recent updated revised drawings. Had I taking their word for it that I was wrong that would have cost me a lot of rework and money! The moral of that story is always check drawings, keep detailed field notes and always if you are working with multiple subs make sure everyone is working on the same drawings.
I can relate to the scale being incorrect when it comes to under slab plumbing, it never seems to work no matter how precise you scale it. If the pipe stub ups end up close you are lucky. More often now the plans have 2- point reference dimensions that you go off of to locate the stub ups and this works dead on every time, and eliminates one from having to scale match the dimensions.