we just finished a city planning project at university and for some reason some of the groups chose really odd dimensions for the buildings, which can make the new city blocks seem much smaller or larger than they are. but our professor knew exactly how big the blocks are, because they are so used to that 1:500 scale. my feel for scale is still in development, but damn it's a powerful tool! also drawing to scale is so important for evaluating if an idea fits on a site
As a student and starting to see things from another perspective as a teaching assistant in the studios - a poor understanding of scale/resolution is by far the biggest time killer for myself and others. The online setting during the pandemic didn’t help and I only finally started to understand the value of properly working to scale with the return to face to face.
I do most of my work on an iPad and on an app called “concepts”. You can zoom in to like 1600% and out to 10% so scale can get sorta funky. But something I do is I limit myself to two or three brush sizes. So if it’s at 1:100, a 3mm brush is 30cm. That means if I get carried away and start trying to go beyond what 1:100 tells you, the lines either get too small to mean anything, or too big to draw any sort of detail. Hand drawing still does something completely different and tells a story an iPad screen can’t (once you print it it’s indistinguishable), but the biggest problem is just a type of situational awareness imo
Yes. I have been using WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface for a long time for the same reason. I had to ask a friend who have purely vector based program to provide me with footage of an endless zoom with no line thickness change.
I'm a tad gobsmacked that you felt the need to bring this up. But then I'm an older female without an architecture degree who has always followed the form follows function maxim and designed with space users in mind. Nothing beats thinking with a pencil at scale.
Great video! I often feel a big contributor to this is role/stage gatekeeping, particular from the youth. Many architects are thrown into delivery/documentation from day one in their careers and only make it out by moving to other firms and forcing reinvention of their role in negotiation. The best way I've found to get people in this rabbithole to appreciate scale is to get them out on the site for their project, they always cant believe how much bigger it feels vs the model.
@@Archimarathon to some degree I feel the phenomenon is caused by technology lending itself later to the projects we work on, whereas softer skills are more valuable up front whilst the designs are more malleable. Hoping there are more platforms that cater to the way architects design versus deliver in future to bridge it. Rhino/sketchup etc are good for design form but dont capture process. Tools like morpholio come to mind, but with tie ins to modelling platforms. Anyway thats my morning soapbox before I dive in. Looking forward to more videos in future!
You are spot on Andrew. Caroline Leaf puts it quick nicely. “ …it’s almost as if we have entered an era where we’ve sacrificed the processing of knowledge for the gathering of data.”
Thanks. I know what you mean. Which is what prompted me to feel the need to make this video. Again talking about important stuff that no one seems to be talking about.
I remember starting up working as a draftsman in an apprenticeship package some 30 years ago. Having my first experience with Autocad I managed to freeze up the computer for over 3 hours due to a command mistake in scale. The most embarrassing moment to me was to try to explain the mistake to my bosses.😅 Thank you for this great video. I hope it reaches as many students as possible.
Luv your show Boys ( Retired Builder ) when I went to Asia to work in the 90's , I would draw the plans out FULL Size and tape each intersection to the slab , this is how I taught my guys ( local rice farmers ) to read drawings and project Scale to actual size . Worked a treat . We built Embassies , Palaces and offices for Fortune 500 companies using this method . The Architects used this to walk the clients through the project and avoid expensive changes ( most of the time ) .
I know some companies have some crazy warehouse and projection on the floor to show the real size of the design. I guess it’s now easy with virtual reality or augmented reality
@@Archimarathon bigplans in melbourne. I think VR and AR are great ways and I am really interested once a design tool gets made to work in these environments, because I think it will be more useful for everyone involved in the design process.
Great video, guys, as always you talk about the important things. In the end, we are communicators. The right use of scales translates into an efficient communication of our ideas. "Making decisions at a particular resolution" is the key to understanding everything.
The story told at 1-50 scale is a completely different story than what is told at 1:100, and again at 1:500. The access to having all the bolts and all the information in a single drawing has made it easy to tell every story in every drawing, but we haven't stopped to think SHOULD we tell every story in every drawing. Even if you have to print it to scale from a model/CAD drawing then use that as a base to sketch over, you're going to be a better designer drawing at a scale that tells the story you need to tell. Enjoyed the video, keep it up!
Scale is important in a way that you sort of alluded to: Urban Street Building massing - external Building massing - internal Space and movement through it Rooms - lighting and orientation FF&E Which of course turns out to be seven. Funny that. Dom Hans Van Der Laan is where I came across the importance of such things, especially the ‘plastic number’. A 3D version of the 2D Fibonacci Sequence, oddly more applicable to buildings which are not drawings or photographs :-)
Reminds me that everything is relative. We constantly compare and contrast. Some people have difficulty using imagination and recall so extra tools like miniature people can help lessen the imagination load. Be careful though as for some people is still too much imagination. What seems obvious is still an abstraction.
I wish there was more focus on this in my course. We are just told which scale each drawing/plan in an assignment should be, and that’s it. No one has ever told us the level of detail corresponding to each scale and explained why scale is important. Constantly the students make spaces too big or too small for their purpose. For a graduate/practitioner it is fine to start the process from for example a small detail or a desired view, because space and scale is intuitive to them, but us students need to learn the other “direction” first. Drawing to and understanding scale should be taught 1st semester, so we get into the habit. Unfortunately, it is not 😢
My lecturers often say that having skills in hand drawn details helps you connect with a client in a way that computer software may have the opposite effect. To me, that makes it an irreplaceable and timeless skill to have.
I firmly believe that 'BIM' has contributed to muddying the waters of working at computers. You don't need a 3D object of a toilet or other fittings that you are not designing, and quite often the 3D model has far too much detail and prints weird at every scale, ruining how drawings read and taking the attention away from what is important. AutoCAD LT 4lyf.
It’s just another tool, a powerful tool but students often don’t have a grasp of the bigger picture and the tool dictates what they do instead of the other way around.
Definitely still relevant for traditional practice today - that being said I’m seeing it become less relevant by the year. At the end of the day we use scales as a way to get our head around not being able to see something in real life 1:1. Technology has changed that A LOT in recent years. Suddenly we can experience the space we’re designing in an immersive 1:1 scale. This suddenly makes at lot of scale drawing irrelevant for the designing of spaces. Not sure how this will translate to construction details, but the concept design stage seems to be leaving the 1:500 - 1:50 scales behind thanks to this tech.
@@Archimarathon I find it great for not getting carried away. Sometimes looking at something on a scaled drawing gives a totally different feeling to what it is going to be in reality, especially more to do with volumes of space - rather than just height or length of something basic like a toilet or carpark. 3d renders have always been deceptive in this way.
I was thinking, damn that fire looks cosy and then I realised its a Mac lol. When I was at Uni, we did everything with Rotring ink pens. These guys going through school today are so lucky, they have such amazing tools now.
Amazing tools, but also incredible distractions from what is more important. Unless we students fill the gaps in what they teach at uni, by ourselves, in our spare time, we will graduate as CAD monkeys, capable of also creating beautiful renders, but clueless as to how to actually design.
@@arnasagen8077 100% correct, I’m in 4th year and just now realized that I need to start reading more books to actually learn how to design. So far it’s been mostly how to use computer tools and copious amounts of sustainability preaching, which I have no problem with until it comes at the cost of neglecting human experience. Most student projects end up being random massing with green roof on top, a lot of us have no idea what we’re doing and at least half don’t even care. I’ve had a sprinkling of good teachers but most of it is a waste of time.
It's truly terrible to try to design on the computer and constantly lose the sense of scale, zooming in and out, really hampers your thought process and leads you astray. Another thing is that in the computer you can't really fit large projects on a screen in 1:100 and certainly not 1:50... you can never see the entire thing at the right resolution level... which you can with a large print. Yet another reason to work at scale and by hand is collaboration. Sitting on a table in front of a plan everyone can quickly comprehend and draw on. Students don't work collaboratively as much as they should...
We try to change this at Archimarathon STUDIO. The Magic Wall does wonders. Psychologically, whiteboard markers seems to be less of an obstacle for committing to drawing
we just finished a city planning project at university and for some reason some of the groups chose really odd dimensions for the buildings, which can make the new city blocks seem much smaller or larger than they are. but our professor knew exactly how big the blocks are, because they are so used to that 1:500 scale.
my feel for scale is still in development, but damn it's a powerful tool!
also drawing to scale is so important for evaluating if an idea fits on a site
Glad to hear you have learnt to realise its value
As a student and starting to see things from another perspective as a teaching assistant in the studios - a poor understanding of scale/resolution is by far the biggest time killer for myself and others. The online setting during the pandemic didn’t help and I only finally started to understand the value of properly working to scale with the return to face to face.
I am glad to hear. Hopefully Peter has been forcing you to draw to scale and showing the value in person. It makes a lot more sense in person.
This should be mandatory viewing in architecture school! One of my classmates had a 1-420 drawing 🤦♂️🥦
Dear lord
I do most of my work on an iPad and on an app called “concepts”. You can zoom in to like 1600% and out to 10% so scale can get sorta funky. But something I do is I limit myself to two or three brush sizes. So if it’s at 1:100, a 3mm brush is 30cm. That means if I get carried away and start trying to go beyond what 1:100 tells you, the lines either get too small to mean anything, or too big to draw any sort of detail.
Hand drawing still does something completely different and tells a story an iPad screen can’t (once you print it it’s indistinguishable), but the biggest problem is just a type of situational awareness imo
Yes. I have been using WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface for a long time for the same reason. I had to ask a friend who have purely vector based program to provide me with footage of an endless zoom with no line thickness change.
I shared this right away to my students slack channel. A perfect synopsis of why scale matters. Thanks for hitting the nail on the head.
Thanks.
I'm a tad gobsmacked that you felt the need to bring this up. But then I'm an older female without an architecture degree who has always followed the form follows function maxim and designed with space users in mind. Nothing beats thinking with a pencil at scale.
Yes it’s quite a problem we are seeing
Great video! I often feel a big contributor to this is role/stage gatekeeping, particular from the youth. Many architects are thrown into delivery/documentation from day one in their careers and only make it out by moving to other firms and forcing reinvention of their role in negotiation. The best way I've found to get people in this rabbithole to appreciate scale is to get them out on the site for their project, they always cant believe how much bigger it feels vs the model.
Stage gatekeeping. I like that word. And yes going out to site is so important
@@Archimarathon to some degree I feel the phenomenon is caused by technology lending itself later to the projects we work on, whereas softer skills are more valuable up front whilst the designs are more malleable. Hoping there are more platforms that cater to the way architects design versus deliver in future to bridge it. Rhino/sketchup etc are good for design form but dont capture process. Tools like morpholio come to mind, but with tie ins to modelling platforms.
Anyway thats my morning soapbox before I dive in. Looking forward to more videos in future!
You are spot on Andrew. Caroline Leaf puts it quick nicely. “ …it’s almost as if we have entered an era where we’ve sacrificed the processing of knowledge for the gathering of data.”
im in my final year of architecture and so far no teacher has ever explained so clearly the use of need of scale. Shall put this into practice stat!
Thanks. I know what you mean. Which is what prompted me to feel the need to make this video. Again talking about important stuff that no one seems to be talking about.
I remember starting up working as a draftsman in an apprenticeship package some 30 years ago. Having my first experience with Autocad I managed to freeze up the computer for over 3 hours due to a command mistake in scale. The most embarrassing moment to me was to try to explain the mistake to my bosses.😅
Thank you for this great video. I hope it reaches as many students as possible.
Oh dear. What a story. Thanks for sharing
Luv your show Boys ( Retired Builder ) when I went to Asia to work in the 90's , I would draw the plans out FULL Size and tape each intersection to the slab , this is how I taught my guys ( local rice farmers ) to read drawings and project Scale to actual size . Worked a treat . We built Embassies , Palaces and offices for Fortune 500 companies using this method . The Architects used this to walk the clients through the project and avoid expensive changes ( most of the time ) .
I know some companies have some crazy warehouse and projection on the floor to show the real size of the design. I guess it’s now easy with virtual reality or augmented reality
It's insane to think about the amount of printing needed to do this!
Paper is cheap. Building is expensive
@@Archimarathon bigplans in melbourne. I think VR and AR are great ways and I am really interested once a design tool gets made to work in these environments, because I think it will be more useful for everyone involved in the design process.
Great video, guys, as always you talk about the important things.
In the end, we are communicators. The right use of scales translates into an efficient communication of our ideas.
"Making decisions at a particular resolution" is the key to understanding everything.
I was lucky to be well schooled in this at university - but I really appreciate the refresher!
Glad to hear
The story told at 1-50 scale is a completely different story than what is told at 1:100, and again at 1:500. The access to having all the bolts and all the information in a single drawing has made it easy to tell every story in every drawing, but we haven't stopped to think SHOULD we tell every story in every drawing. Even if you have to print it to scale from a model/CAD drawing then use that as a base to sketch over, you're going to be a better designer drawing at a scale that tells the story you need to tell.
Enjoyed the video, keep it up!
Yes. Clarity of information at given scale
Scale is important in a way that you sort of alluded to:
Urban
Street
Building massing - external
Building massing - internal
Space and movement through it
Rooms - lighting and orientation
FF&E
Which of course turns out to be seven. Funny that. Dom Hans Van Der Laan is where I came across the importance of such things, especially the ‘plastic number’. A 3D version of the 2D Fibonacci Sequence, oddly more applicable to buildings which are not drawings or photographs :-)
Reminds me that everything is relative. We constantly compare and contrast. Some people have difficulty using imagination and recall so extra tools like miniature people can help lessen the imagination load. Be careful though as for some people is still too much imagination. What seems obvious is still an abstraction.
Indeed. My our message is about RESOLUTION and staging of information in the design process.
I wish there was more focus on this in my course. We are just told which scale each drawing/plan in an assignment should be, and that’s it. No one has ever told us the level of detail corresponding to each scale and explained why scale is important. Constantly the students make spaces too big or too small for their purpose. For a graduate/practitioner it is fine to start the process from for example a small detail or a desired view, because space and scale is intuitive to them, but us students need to learn the other “direction” first. Drawing to and understanding scale should be taught 1st semester, so we get into the habit. Unfortunately, it is not 😢
That’s why you are at Archimarathon STUDIO
My lecturers often say that having skills in hand drawn details helps you connect with a client in a way that computer software may have the opposite effect. To me, that makes it an irreplaceable and timeless skill to have.
I feel like I've reached the point where I can sketch to scale and it feels like a farken SUPERPOWER! I still get trapped IN the computer though.
Take the red pill.
I want to know if you suggest sketching in scale in schematic design
Do you do such a thing or think that it's limiting or I don't know mix both ways?
Definitely. You’ll get used to working in scale
Nice Mac 🖥
wow
I firmly believe that 'BIM' has contributed to muddying the waters of working at computers. You don't need a 3D object of a toilet or other fittings that you are not designing, and quite often the 3D model has far too much detail and prints weird at every scale, ruining how drawings read and taking the attention away from what is important. AutoCAD LT 4lyf.
It’s just another tool, a powerful tool but students often don’t have a grasp of the bigger picture and the tool dictates what they do instead of the other way around.
@@Archimarathon Yes, I agree, it takes a lot of 'pre-work' to make BIM software work for you instead of being a limitation.
Definitely still relevant for traditional practice today - that being said I’m seeing it become less relevant by the year. At the end of the day we use scales as a way to get our head around not being able to see something in real life 1:1. Technology has changed that A LOT in recent years. Suddenly we can experience the space we’re designing in an immersive 1:1 scale. This suddenly makes at lot of scale drawing irrelevant for the designing of spaces. Not sure how this will translate to construction details, but the concept design stage seems to be leaving the 1:500 - 1:50 scales behind thanks to this tech.
Yes and no. It’s about making relevant decisions without getting carried away
@@Archimarathon I find it great for not getting carried away. Sometimes looking at something on a scaled drawing gives a totally different feeling to what it is going to be in reality, especially more to do with volumes of space - rather than just height or length of something basic like a toilet or carpark. 3d renders have always been deceptive in this way.
I was thinking, damn that fire looks cosy and then I realised its a Mac lol.
When I was at Uni, we did everything with Rotring ink pens.
These guys going through school today are so lucky, they have such amazing tools now.
It’s not about the tools as much as it is about understanding and mindset
Amazing tools, but also incredible distractions from what is more important. Unless we students fill the gaps in what they teach at uni, by ourselves, in our spare time, we will graduate as CAD monkeys, capable of also creating beautiful renders, but clueless as to how to actually design.
@@arnasagen8077 100% correct, I’m in 4th year and just now realized that I need to start reading more books to actually learn how to design. So far it’s been mostly how to use computer tools and copious amounts of sustainability preaching, which I have no problem with until it comes at the cost of neglecting human experience. Most student projects end up being random massing with green roof on top, a lot of us have no idea what we’re doing and at least half don’t even care. I’ve had a sprinkling of good teachers but most of it is a waste of time.
It's truly terrible to try to design on the computer and constantly lose the sense of scale, zooming in and out, really hampers your thought process and leads you astray.
Another thing is that in the computer you can't really fit large projects on a screen in 1:100 and certainly not 1:50... you can never see the entire thing at the right resolution level... which you can with a large print.
Yet another reason to work at scale and by hand is collaboration. Sitting on a table in front of a plan everyone can quickly comprehend and draw on. Students don't work collaboratively as much as they should...
We try to change this at Archimarathon STUDIO. The Magic Wall does wonders. Psychologically, whiteboard markers seems to be less of an obstacle for committing to drawing