[pitdicker]

For construction plans the A0 and A1 paper sizes are standard. But those paper sizes don't come as sheets, they are printed on a roll of ca. 900mm wide and cut by the printer.

So if the drawing doesn't fit on a standard paper paper we just take the width of an A0 (841mm) and pick some arbitrary length. My personal limit is 200cm because then it becomes a bit impractical to handle. And if it really, really doesn't fit in the 841mm width, I'll take the edges of the 900mm that are usually cut off too instead of splitting the drawing awkwardly over two papers.

[Symbiote]

Were they produced in sheets before roughly the 1990s? Before that, CAD drawings were produced by a pen plotter, and before that by hand.

I saw both methods being taught at school when I was a child, though only with A2 or A3 size paper.

[pitdicker]

That is before my time, I only ever owned a serial A3 XY-plotter. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotter#History) suggest it was possible on a roll:

> Early pen plotters, e.g., the Calcomp 565 of 1959, worked by placing the paper over a roller that moved the paper back and forth for X motion, while the pen moved back and forth on a track for Y motion. The paper was supplied in roll form and had perforations along both edges that were engaged by sprockets on the rollers.

> In the 1980s, the small and lightweight HP 7470 introduced the "grit wheel" mechanism, eliminating the need for perforations along the edges, unlike the Calcomp plotters two decades earlier. The grit wheels at opposite edges of the sheet press against resilient polyurethane-coated rollers and form tiny indentations in the sheet. As the sheet is moved back and forth, the grit wheels keep the sheet in proper registration due to the grit particles falling into the earlier indentations, much like the teeth of two gears meshing. The pen is mounted on a carriage that moves back and forth in a line between the grit wheels, representing the orthogonal axis. These smaller "home-use" plotters became popular for desktop business graphics and in engineering laboratories

I think plotting on sheets was more common though.

[NikkiA]

When I studied drafting at school (age 15) in the 80s, we took paper off a roll using a guillotine slicer and the thing that held the roll had markings for the right length for A0 and A1, so you'd just pull the end of the roll to the 'A1' mark, and slice the slider across, and you had a sheet of A1 in your hand.

Sadly, this meant that the paper would have natural curl to it, but it wasn't a big deal once you'd taped it to your drafting table with masking tape.

[seoulbigchris]

ANSI sizes F and above define various standard “roll” sizes. I’ve never had a need for roll format, but I’ve wondered what the ISO equivalent was. Wikipedia says these were used for full-scale layouts of aircraft parts, automotive parts, wiring harnesses, etc, and in some visual art fields.