North Arrow & Scale Bar

Every presentation plan needs a north arrow and a bar scale. Both are parametric objects in Studio, drawn from their settings rather than placed as artwork, so they stay correct when you move or resize them.

Insert either from the DRAW tab. Select one and the Plan Object tab appears in the property panel.

Shared Controls

ControlWhat it does
SizeHow large the object is drawn on the sheet.
Rotation (degrees)On a north arrow this is the north direction. On a scale bar it orients the bar.

Both can also be moved, rotated and scaled with the on-canvas handles.

North Arrow

Arrow Style offers Simple, Classic and Compass. Rotation points north: set it to match the drawing's orientation, including when the CAD viewport was twisted.

Scale Bar

A paper sheet carries no plot scale of its own, so the bar is drawn from what you tell it:

ControlWhat it does
Drawing Scale What one paper unit represents: the "1 in = 20 ft" of the sheet.
Segment Length How much real-world distance each segment of the bar covers.
Segment Count How many segments the bar has.

The panel shows the resulting physical width of the bar as you change these, so you can see whether it will fit where you intend to put it.

Get the drawing scale right. It comes from the viewport scale on the CAD sheet, not from anything Studio can infer, because paper space carries no plot scale. A scale bar with the wrong drawing scale is worse than no scale bar.

Resizing a scale bar

Dragging the corner handles resizes the bar physically while keeping it truthful: the drawing scale value adjusts so the labels still say something correct. If you want the bar to represent a different distance, change Segment Length or Segment Count rather than stretching it.

Sheet furniture that reads

  • Put the north arrow and scale bar on their own layer so they can be moved as a pair and excluded from styling experiments.
  • If the sheet has a title block from background capture, place these inside the title block's graphics area rather than over the plan.
  • Round segment lengths of 10, 20, 50 or 100 feet read faster than exact ones.
  • Check both after switching looks: the lettering font changes with the look, and a longer label may need a slightly larger object.