Scale drawings of a car showing measurments???

OK so I am cloning a car. I wanted to know if anyone out there knew how to take measurments from say the hubcap on the car and translate that into actually measurments of the roof height, distance between front and rear piller, etc etc. of the car in the picture.

Anyone with this knowledge?

 

If you know the actual diameter of the hubcap (or what ever part you use as a reference) measure the size of it in the picture and divide. If the hubcap is 8" and the image size is 1/4" you need to scale eveything up X32. Calipers are best for accurate measurements.

 

To get really accurate measurements, go to Kinkos and have them print as large a copy as they can. Take an architect's scale ruler with you and find a scale on it that measures the hubcap in the large print accurately.

If the first printing is not quite right then have them reprint it a just little smaller until it is right on the money when measuring the hubcap. They may want to charge for each print. If so just hang them around the shop for inspiration.

Once you have a “Scaled” print on which you can measure the hub cap accurately, then just measure whatever you need on that photo using that same scale. Do not forget perspective. It can make a big difference if the photo was taken from close range.

I found architect's scales were easy to use once I got the hang of it. And this sounds like a long term project.

What are you building?

 

You can even do it with access to a good copy machine. Just keep scaling it up or down, until you get a measurement scale you can work with, like 1/16" = 1 in.
Did it with another project, am doing it with a new project.
I also like to cut out circles with differetn size radius', that helps a lot with sizing how much they rounded corners, or how they did radius' on window frames, etc.

 

If you have autocad you can import a picture and draw on top of it, scale it to whatever size you have for reference (wheelbase works good for me), etc.

 

I like to use an Engineer's scale rather than an architect's because it is decimal based rather than 1/16ths and I can up or down scale using a conversion factor on my calculator more easily. Perspective will bite you. I like to take 3 or more overlapping pictures of a profile, all from the same distance away and then stitch them together to get rid of the perspective problem. It helps to have something of a known length in the photo to establish a scale when you enlarge the photo later.

 

x2 on the AutoCAD. Great precision just by scaling to a known dimension. It helps if the picture is a straight shot, meaning a nice level elevation view to keep the accuracy higher before scaling.