General Notes and Legends: The Fine Print That Governs

Lesson 4 of 32 · 7 min read

Every sheet has a corner most people skip: a dense column of numbered sentences in small text. Skipping it is like signing an agreement without reading the clauses - because that is literally what the general notes are: the standing rules under which every line and number on the sheet must be read. Site engineers lose arguments (and contractors lose money) not over drawn geometry but over these sentences. Here is a real notes block, from a GFC elevation sheet of Project A, the nine-storey commercial tower.

General notes block - GFC elevation sheet, Project A. Six general notes from a real GFC elevation sheet of Project A, the nine-storey commercial tower - units, cross-discipline authority, the discrepancy duty, the do-not-scale ban, and the RFI override clause. Typos as printed.(Real project sheet, identifying details redacted — tap to zoom.)

Six notes, each one load-bearing. Let us take them in order, exactly as printed.

Note 1: "All dimensions are in mm unless otherwise specified"

This single sentence is why a wall dimension reads 230 and not 0.23: Indian working drawings dimension in millimetres, with levels in metres or millimetres relative to a datum. The trap is the second half - "unless otherwise specified". Imported details, older village-mistri sketches and some vendor drawings mix feet-and-inches or centimetres; you will meet mixed-unit sheets later in this course. When a number looks ten times too big or small, the units have changed on you - stop and check the note.

Notes 2 and 3: this sheet does not stand alone

Note 2: the drawing "must be read in conjunction with structural drawings". Note 3 sharpens it: "all structural sizes and structural details to be refered from drawings of structural consultants" (the typo REFERED is printed on the sheet - typos do not void notes). Together they draw a boundary of authority: the architectural sheet may show a column, but its size is owned by the structural consultant's sheet. Where an architectural plan shows a 400 mm column and the structural schedule says 450 x 600, the structural sheet wins on size - and the discrepancy itself triggers Note 4. This is the general pattern of a drawing set: each discipline's sheets are authoritative for their own content, and the notes tell you which sheet to obey for what.

Note 4: discrepancies go to the architect BEFORE execution

"Any discrepancies in this drawing shall be bought to the notice of the architect before execution" (again, the typo - BOUGHT for brought - is on the real sheet). This is the clause that decides who pays for a clash. Find a mismatch, flag it in writing, before you build, and the cost of resolving it belongs to the design side. Build first and flag later, and the rework is yours - the note gave you a duty to ask. On site this means: a discrepancy is never a site-level judgment call to make silently. It is a query - dated, written, answered.

Note 5: do not scale the drawing

"This drawing should not be scaled. Only written dimensions to be followed." The reasons are practical: prints get resized, PDFs get printed fit-to-page, paper stretches, and CAD linework is not guaranteed dimensionally exact. Here is the classic failure, in numbers:

Lesson data table
Step	What happens	Value
Original sheet	A1 size, drawn at 1:100; a 4.0 m wall measures 40 mm on paper	40 mm = 4,000 mm
Site copy	printed A1 to A3: two paper sizes down = 50% linear	the same wall now measures 20 mm
Engineer scales it	reads 20 mm, applies 1:100 from the title block	concludes 2,000 mm
Reality		4,000 mm - a 100% error

A missing dimension is never license to pull out the scale rule. It is an RFI: "dimension not shown between X and Y - please advise". The wrong-length wall in this example is a demolish-and-rebuild plus the knock-on delay to every trade behind it - for a 3 m stretch of 230 mm brickwork with plaster, roughly Rs. 9,000-12,000 (indicative mid-2026) before counting time. Module 2 covers scales properly, including when a stated scale can be used for estimation.

Note 6: the RFI response overrides the drawing

The shortest note is the strongest: "RFI response overrides the drawing." An RFI (request for information) is your written query; the consultant's written answer becomes the governing instruction even where it contradicts the printed sheet. Two consequences follow. First, the drawing in your hand is not the whole truth - the current truth is drawing + all RFI responses against it, which is why sites keep an RFI register pinned to the drawing register. Second, an RFI response is only as good as its paper trail: a verbal "haan, theek hai" on the phone overrides nothing. Get answers in writing - email counts - and file them against the sheet number and revision.

Which paper wins. A practical precedence ladder assembled from the excerpt's own notes. Your contract's precedence-of-documents clause is the final authority - but this ordering is what the sheet itself declares.

Legends: the sheet's dictionary

The second kind of fine print is the legend: the table that maps this sheet's symbols, tags and hatches to their meanings. Wall types as hexagon tags (W1, W2...), doors as tags keyed to a schedule, level markers as split circles, materials as hatch patterns. Two rules make legends safe to use:

The symbols a legend defines. Typical entries in an Indian architectural legend. Meanings are project-specific - read the legend on every new set instead of importing memory.

Legends are sheet-local or set-local. W1 on this project's sheets is defined by this project's legend - on your last project W1 may have meant a different wall entirely. Read the legend on each new set; never import memory.
If a symbol is not in the legend, ask. Guessed symbols become built mistakes. The same RFI route applies.

You will meet a rich real legend (wall, door and elevator tags) in module 2, and MEP legends in module 6.

How this protects your money

Notes 4, 5 and 6 form a liability machine, and it runs on paper. The party who scales a print, or builds over a known discrepancy silently, owns the consequence - the notes said so. The party who queries in writing before execution converts the same situation into a variation or a design correction at the designer's cost. In the RERA era this is doubly true for developer-side teams: quality obligations and defect liability run on documented instructions, and "the drawing was unclear" is not a defence anywhere. One dated RFI costs five minutes; it is the cheapest legal protection sold in construction. (Commonly applied practice - the precedence of documents clause in your specific contract governs.)

Common mistakes

Skipping the notes on familiar-looking sheets. Notes vary by office and by sheet; the elevation's notes are not the plan's notes.
Scaling from prints - especially from PDFs opened on a phone, where zoom makes any measurement meaningless.
Treating typos as invalidating. RECEVIED, REFERED, BOUGHT - real sheets carry them; the obligations stand.
Accepting verbal answers to written questions. If Note 6 makes the RFI response king, an undocumented response makes nobody king - and you the payer.
Importing legend meanings from a previous project. Same symbol, different dictionary.

What comes next

You now hold every tool this module teaches for the margins of the sheet: the set, the views, the title block, the notes and legends. The final lesson of the module puts them together on the main event - reading a full floor plan end to end, on two real Project A sheets, without missing what matters.

Key takeaways

General notes are contractual rules that govern every line on the sheet - read them before the drawing, on every new sheet.
Bare dimensions on Indian working drawings are millimetres unless a note says otherwise; unit changes are flagged, not guessed.
Structural sizes belong to the structural consultant's sheets even when an architectural sheet draws the member.
Discrepancies must be raised in writing before execution - flag first and the cost is design-side; build first and it is yours.
Never scale a print: a fit-to-page or A1-to-A3 resize silently halves measurements while the title-block scale stays unchanged.
A written RFI response overrides the drawing itself, so the RFI register is part of the drawing set - and verbal answers override nothing.

Verify on site

Read the general notes block of every sheet you build from this week - margin column, numbered list.
Confirm the unit rule on each sheet before taking off any dimension from it.
Cross-check one structural member size on an architectural sheet against the structural consultant's sheet.
Log every discrepancy you find as a dated written query before the affected work is executed.
Remove scale rules from the drawing table - a missing dimension is an RFI, not a measurement.
File every RFI response against its sheet number and revision, next to the drawing register.
Check each unfamiliar symbol against this set's legend - not against your memory of the last project.

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