This is particularly useful when measuring via a digital screen or mobile device, and when a plotter is not available to print the required paper size. This is because the scale bar, no matter how big or small the drawing becomes, maintains its proportion to the drawings subject. Why are they important?Īside from making map and drawing reading easier, when a scale bar is present, the drawing or map doesn’t necessarily need to be printed to a specific size. The addition of a scale bar however means that the drawing can be measured using a traditional ruler and/or via any other well proportioned object such as a credit card or posit.Īs for maps, these come in a variety of shapes and sizes that due to the large areas being shown, rarely represent a traditional drawing scale, and a scale bar is therefore the only way to accurately measure distance. Particularly within the design, architectural, and engineering professions, in many instances drawings are printed to an exact size and can therefore be measured via a scale rule. A scale bar is a linear graphic that is divided into equal segments and used to measure distances on drawings and/or maps that are produced to a set scale, but not necessarily printed to one.
