Cross-Section · 1 mm

About Cross-Section · 1 mm

The classic millimetre cross-section grid: a faint 1 mm lattice, every fifth line slightly heavier, every tenth line bold. The triple weighting lets your eye pick out distances at a glance without the grid competing with the drawing on top of it. Further reading: A practitioner reading list covers the standards lineage in more depth.

Standards lineage

Line-weight hierarchy follows the ISO 128-20:1996 drawing-line standard (continuous narrow / continuous wide).

A short history

Pre-printed millimetre paper became commercially available in continental Europe from the 1860s onward, originating in Prussian engineering schools.

Where designers reach for it

• Lab notebooks and experimental data plots
• Mechanical detail drawings before transfer to CAD
• Hand-plotted graphs in physics and engineering coursework
• Sketch elevations of small assemblies and brackets

Printing this grid

Every variant on this page is delivered as a vector SVG with physical millimetre dimensions baked into the file, so a compliant printer driver will reproduce it at exact 1:1 scale by default. Choose the sheet size that matches your printer tray, set scaling to 100 % (never "fit to page"), and verify with the calibration check on our how-to-print guide. Buyer's guide: Comparing the major architectural scale rulers can help you pick the right physical scale rule to use over the printed grid.