Here’s a problem many people face when working on engineering drawings, especially plan and profile sheets.  How to create a drawing with different vertical and horizontal scales?

As everyone should know by now, in AutoCAD, you always draw FULL scale.  This becomes a problem when working on some drawings, because when you are working on very large horizontal scale, you sometimes must exaggerate the vertical scale in order to make it read.

The best way I’ve found to accomplish this is to create two drawings.  In the first drawing, draw everything full scale.  Do not put any text on the drawing.  When finished, create a second drawing and set it up to the horizontal scale.  Then xref the first drawing into the second drawing and change the “X Scale” to adjust for the difference in scale.   For example, if your horizontal scale needs to be 1=200, and your vertical scale needs to be 1=20, change the value of the “X” scale to be 10.  It will stretch the XREF so that the height is 10 times bigger than the width.

Now add your text.  Don’t forget to set all your scales for your layout, dimensions and text to be at the horizontal scale factor.