Pro tip: I was wrong about how much to zoom in on my detail views

For a long time, I kept my detail callouts at 1:5 scale, thinking it was the standard. But a senior drafter at a firm in Portland pointed out that for complex assemblies, 1:2 is way clearer for the fabricator. I switched on a recent steel connection drawing, and the shop sent back zero RFIs for the first time. Has anyone else found a better scale for specific details?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessicaw112mo ago

Ever notice how we stick to defaults just because they're there? Like using the tiny icons on your phone apps because that's how they came, even though the bigger ones are way easier to hit. Your story about the scale reminds me of that. We get used to a setting (the 1:5 zoom) and assume it's the best way, when really, the clearer option (1:2) was just a small change away. It happens with phone text size, or even the zoom on a map. You just have to question the preset sometimes.

walker.rowan1mo ago

My old car radio stayed on static for three years.

simonw412mo ago

Actually, sticking with a known standard like 1:5 makes a lot of sense for consistency across different shops and drafters. @jessicaw11 has a point about questioning presets, but changing scale for every complex detail can just confuse the team and slow things down. The zero RFIs might just be luck or a really good shop that time. Isn't there a risk of making drawings too cluttered if you zoom in that much on every single detail?