I'm just sitting here looking over the plans for our new building at 
work. It looks roughly like a tangled maze of lines, encrusted with text.

Some of the text is in fact almost unreadable because it's so tiny. Even 
when printed out, I can bearly read it. I had a look at the PDF file, 
and it says the document dimensions are "23.39 x 33.11 inches". A quick 
trip to Google tells me that's 594.106 x 840.994 mm. (Wow, that sounds 
pretty big!) A quick check on Wikipedia tells me that's exactly A1. (!!)

So, where the plan says "1:50 scale", it's really "1:400" when printed 
on A4 instead of A1.

The drawing contains a number of items of interesting text. For example, 
this is "DWG NO 2222.173". It is described as "GROUND FLOOR PLAN, OFFICE 
B SETTING OUT".

Also, next to the stairs, I found this:

   OVERALL RISE OF STAIR 3825mm

   EACH RISE: 165mm (x23)
   EACH GOING: 250mm.
   BALUSTRADE TO BE TOP FIXED.
   DESIGN TO COMPLY WITH B.REGS
   PART K & M.

I just love the way they quote the size of a flight of stairs in 
millimeters! I mean, it rises 12 feet up, and we care about 25mm?

I have no idea what "BALUSTRADE" is. (Assuming I've even read it right 
from the tiny writing on the printout.)

Similarly, ever head of "BRISE SOLEIL"? Because apparently this building 
will have *lots* of those.

But most of all, it's just numbers. *Millions* of numbers. Almost every 
line has a second line next to it with some numbers. Many of the corners 

there are dashed lines *everywhere*.

(I just reliased... Every single doorway in the place has a unique ID 
written on it. Wow.)

There are also all sorts of symbols that look like they probably mean 
something to a building engineer. Means nothing to me though! Heh.

It's certainly interesting anyway...

Post a reply to this message