Unproductive meetings attempting to work with drawings that have been printed at the wrong scale, not dimensioned, or in a unit of measurement you’re not comfortable with is a frustration we can all relate to. These frustrations are what inspired one designer to create the Smart Scale Ruler, a physical, digitalized ruler that changes to suit your chosen unit of measurement or even work to a scale that doesn’t exist.

Joanne Swisterski, the inventor of the Smart Scale Ruler, describes that although the design industry works with more and more advanced technology, the need to use paper drawings in client meetings and at construction sites is still essential: “Despite living in a largely digital world, it will always be a tactile one.” The Smart Scale Ruler combines the familiarity of a physical ruler with the expanded possibilities of being digitalized.

The Smart Scale ruler has three functions: Customize, Convert and Divide. With the Customize function, you can work with a drawing that has not been printed to scale, using its reference points to create a custom scale that you can understand the rest of the drawing with. With the Convert function, you can easily switch from Imperial or Metric units of measurement, allowing collaboration between industries and countries to become much more efficient. Finally, with the Divide function, the ruler can split into a desired number of segments, saving the user from having to do the calculations themselves.

With a sleek design, intuitive controls, and a familiar look, it is user-friendly, as well as having a long battery life and the ability to be USB chargeable. The Smart Scale ruler is currently working with Kickstarter and accepting pre-orders at the beginning of April 2018. [Update: The Smart Scale Kickstarter has now launched! You can order yours here.]

Learn more from the video below or by visiting their website, here.