The scale bar

Annotation ▸ 📏 Scale bar puts a scale bar on the drawing. Like the north marker it is a drawing annotation: one per drawing, 2D only, and it takes no part in any measurement or export of quantities.

It reads the drawing, not a setting

A scale bar is a measurement, so its length comes from the drawing's own scale and it grows and shrinks with the zoom — a bar that kept a constant size on screen while its label said “20 m” would be a lie in every export. It picks a round figure that fits: 1, 2 or 5 times a power of ten, the standard map progression, so it always reads as a number someone would write on a drawing. The control bar tells you what it currently reads.

Style and options

Three styles — chequered, ticked line and plain — with the number of divisions and an overall size. Ratio adds the representative fraction (1:1250 and so on) underneath, read off the current zoom at 96 dpi.

Click or drag to move it, from the tool or from Edit; Delete removes it and undo brings it back.