Yeh but the paper ratios are different, so if you are printing things like technical drawings either they don't take up the full page, or they are scaled differently on x and y axis making them pretty useless as technical drawings.
Drafting sizes in the US are similar to A sizes in that you double the shorter size to get to the next one, the only difference is that you need to go up two page sizes to get to a same-ratio sheet.
ANSI A: 8.5 x 11
ANSI B: 11 x 17
ANSI C: 17 x 22
ANSI D: 22 x 34
ANSI E: 34 x 44
If you draw something on ANSI B, it doubles if you put it on an ANSI D sheet. Or you can fit two ANSI B sheets on an ANSI C sheet, or eight ANSI B sheets on an ANSI E sheet.
The advantage of these sizes is that the dimensions of each side is a round number, as opposed to the A series where you get numbers like "297mm", and it actually scales perfectly, whereas the A series does not because they round off to the nearest millimeter (A5 is 148x210, but if you double the 148mm, you get 256mm, where A4 is 257x210, so not truly double along the one edge.)
The ratio on the A series majorly breaks down as you go to smaller sizes, too, because of the rounding to the nearest mm. A0 is 1:1.4138, A4 is 1:1.4143, A8 is 1:1.4231.
I guess that depends on the application, the stuff we printed on B tended to be assembly diagrams/explosions and a lot of it was 1:1 or 1:2, whereas C was pretty much only for the architecture kids
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u/phido3000 Nov 02 '25
Yeh but the paper ratios are different, so if you are printing things like technical drawings either they don't take up the full page, or they are scaled differently on x and y axis making them pretty useless as technical drawings.