Why does a scale 1x1 object measure 2x2?

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1

I must have missed this somewhere in the documentation I’ve been reading (and can’t find an answer elsewhere on the forum), so I hope people

I’m creating a scale model of something, and it appears that an object that is scaled 1x1x1 actually measures 2x2x2. Can someone confirm this, and/or tell me why this works that way?

2

Think of scale as a percentage of it’s size. If you make something 2 meters square, at the outset it has a scale of 1 (100%). If you double it’s size in object mode it now appears 200% bigger. Like a microscope. The object’s actual size didn’t change, you just magnified it. If you size something in edit mode, then you are changing it physically, not visually. Applying the scale in object mode forces the new dimensions to be the new 100% size.

3

Thanks! That makes more sense now. So the default objects that Blender creates are 2x2x2, but because that’s their default size that is defined as 1x by 1x by 1x.