Very confused, A3 is 50% of A2 right?!

[LERsince1991]

Ok so I'm working on my architecture presentation with scale drawings and I'm very confused.

We were meant to work on A2 sized sheets but the A2 printer is crap so I decided to do it for a fraction of the cost on A3, but all my page setup and layout is on A2 and when I print to A3 and let the printer scale it down it seems to be a random scale. So I'm going to change the layout to A3 but I haven't got time to do this manually for all the pages.

So I change the doc setup to A3 then select everything and scale it by 50% at the top and its well too small for the page now? What gives?

I cant work this out... scales always confuse me lol

Any help please!?
Luke.

 

[design-is]

You'll want to reduce it at 71%

More info on magnification factors between all A sizes.

Good luck with your presentation!

/Doug

 

[LERsince1991]

70.7%

But this is very annoying because all my drawings are out of scale now... damn...

 

[Moonjumper]

A3 is 50% of the area of A2, not 50% along each side.

Starting at A0 you fold in half to get A1, repeat this process down to A8. Therefore the short side is the same size as the long side of the next size down.

You have 2 options.

1. Find a cheaper place to print at A2. Ring round your local independent printers, one will probably do you a much cheaper deal. Last time I tried, one was only 25% of the cost of my first quote. He was newly set-up and needing work. He put a lot of effort into doing the best job he could.

2. Scale your content independent of the page layout. Have your borders, titles, etc. scaled to 70.7% to suit the paper size, so it looks right. Have the plans, sections, etc. scaled to 50% so that they are to a recognised scale.

1. is more expensive, 2. is more work. Your choice.

 

[LERsince1991]

Thanks for both comments!
I get it now, I'm doing a little presentation today with everything on A3 because I found a way to get the uni printers to do a full A3 colour for 5p but shhh lol.

I'll see what my tutor wants today for final presentation. but It'll be like 20x A2 pages :/
Cheers!

 

[LERsince1991]

Sorted!

Scaled it all to 71% and set out on A3, then re plotted the autoCAD drawings to a better scale, Cheers!

lol... like 25 pages of A3 now, looks awesome!

 

[quatermass]

One of the best things I ever did was learn all the A sizes and scale factors off by heart - I recommend it!

 

[LERsince1991]

I'm going to make a print out of all the different line thicknesses from indesign and autocad, font sizes and probably put a scale table on too