Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

Standard for Scale Bars and representative fraction

February 05 2008 | 2 comments

Is there a standard for the correlation between a Scale Bar and representative fraction. ie - if I have a map that is to the scale of 1:125,000, should the scale bar be in divisions of 125? Should it stay at the recommended round number (50, 100)?

Mapping Center Answer:

I would recommend the second option. The main property you want to preserve with a scale bar is ease of use. Your map readers will find it much easier to estimate or measure easily divisible units like 10, 50, 100, etc., rather than 125, 62.5, etc. Further, the general rule for the size of the scale bar is that it should be not much larger that one third the width of the map.

Add a midpoint to every subdivision rather than ju posted by Andrew Lawrence on Apr 13 2012 10:57AM

I'd like to generate a scale bar with a midpoint mark in every subdivision as well as the subdivision marks in each subdivision. ArcMap only seems to offer the option of a midpoint in the first subdivision. Is there any way around this?

Sorry -- not possible at this time posted by Aileen Buckley on Apr 13 2012 2:20PM

Sorry -- that is not possible at this time. If you want, go to the ArcGIS Ideas page and submit the idea there or search to see if it has alredy been submitted, then vote to support it. Here is a link from Mapping Center: http://mappingcenter.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=ask.gateway.

If you would like to post a comment, please login.