@mary mentions a triangular scale in discussion about layouts Layout Scaling R7 - #11 by mary .
For you young ‘uns, here’s a picture of mine, from late 70’s, although I always longed for a K&E, and was in a hurry to get one the day I needed it, I settled for another brand. These would have been treacherous weapons for grade school teachers [ to use on us] in the 50’s!
This one would take you across the entire D size sheet!
In most all CAD products, you draw full size and scale at plot time or on the layout where you print 1:1 or full size. In the later, the details are assigned the scale.
To draft on paper (aka manual drafting), you had to scale the model down as your were drawing, or draw to a scale you selected on the triangular scale. How else would you fit a 100’x 50’ building on your sheet of D size vellum, lol.
A common question over the years teaching AutoCAD and Rhino was “what scale are we drawing at”? Full size was the reply, 1:1. Because of this, you can pull off dimensions, areas, volumes from the full size model. This a major benefit of CAD.
Thank for the flash back @Carl_Mesrobian & @martinsiegrist
Sincerely,
Mary Ann Fugier
My pleasure!