As our minds drift back to elementary American history lessons tomorrow, one can only think, “Did Christopher Columbus have access to an architect scale ruler in his day?”
Okay, sure, that’s probably not the first question that pops to mind when you think about Columbus Day. But surely, Columbus must have possessed a ruler of sorts to help measure his ships, even if it wasn’t an architect scale ruler.
Let’s jump right into a subject that is close to everyone: Designing a kitchen. The architect scale ruler is a very useful device to plan your new kitchen. It helps you to draw your room and appliances to scale, and to read the measurements later. It will tell you if there is enough room to place a refrigerator in a certain part of your space.
Now let’s get to the nitty gritty. Which scale should you use on the ruler? Your ruler may have some or all of these scales:
(1/8, ¼), (½, 1), (3/8, 3/4), (3, 1½)
If you use the “1” scale, that would mean that 1 inch on the scale equals one foot in real life. Let’s not use that one, because your 15 foot long kitchen would need a piece of paper at least 15 inches long. Let’s use the 1/4 scale, which means 1/4 inch on the scale (on the paper) represents one foot in real life. This means that your 8 inch wide paper will represent 32 feet. Your kitchen will fit on that paper now.
From here on, you just measure your room and appliances, and draw them on your paper, to scale.
A quick designer tip: Draw your appliances to scale on colored paper, cut them out, and move them around on your drawing for the best arrangement. Also, do the same with any other cabinets or tables that you already have, and want to use them in your design.
Not all rulers are created equal. Some are rigid, some are retractable tapes, some are in metric, some are in imperial. There is also a special kind of ruler used for converting the measurements on a scaled-down drawing or map: the architect scale ruler.