How to Scale in AutoCAD: Step by Step

SCALE is the name of the command that helps scale objects in AutoCAD.

If you have been inserting blocks in existing projects, you mush be aware of how important this command can be. The main issue that arises most of the time when inserting an object or a block in a project you are working on, is that the inserted object is either too small or too big compared to the rest of the objects of your project.

What SCALE does is, it helps you scale a given object independently of others.

Notice on the example above how the inner circle was scaled independently to the outer geometry of the project.

How to SCALE in AutoCAD

The more intuitive approach to use this command is the following

1. Type SCALE and Press ENTER
2. Select the object to scale and Press ENTER
3. Specify the base point (with a click)
4. Specify the scale factor.

What is the Scale factor?

If we consider the images we have below, the inner circle was scaled with a scale factor of 15.29/8.81 which is approximately 1.73.

The base point

The base point of the example below was chosen to be the center of the inner circle.

Using the SCALE command with a reference

You can also make use of this command without using the Scale factor, using a reference instead.

Let’s consider the following example. What we want to do is to scale the radius of the inner circle of the object to be equal to the length of the red line. And furthermore we want to keep a copy of the original object.

To use the SCALE command adding the reference to the equation

1. Type SCALE and Press ENTER
2. Select the object to scale and Press ENTER
3. Specify the base point (Let’s it be the center point of the inner circle)
4. Type C and Press ENTER
5. type R and Press ENTER
6. Click on the center of the inner circle
7. Click on a quadrant of the circle
8. Type P and Press ENTER
9. Select one end of the red line
10. Select the other end of the red line

Here is the result

If we omitted the step 4 in the last procedure, here is what we would get

Notice the value of the inner circle is equal to the value of the red line.