Cross-Section · 2 mm

About Cross-Section · 2 mm

A 2 mm engineering grid that splits the difference between the dense 1 mm sheet and the open 5 mm school grid. Comfortable for hand-plotting graphs that need three-significant-figure precision without forcing you to write smaller than your handwriting can comfortably manage. Further reading: A practitioner reading list covers the standards lineage in more depth.

Standards lineage

Conforms to ISO 128-20:1996 line-weight hierarchy and ISO 216 trim sizes.

A short history

2 mm grids appeared as a Soviet standard for engineering coursework in the 1950s and persisted in Eastern European technical schools well into the 1990s.

Where designers reach for it

• Hand-plotted scientific graphs
• Civil-engineering survey calculations
• Cartographic colour-key layouts
• Mid-resolution mechanical sketches

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.