The Scale tool will place a scale on the screen. Scales are typically used in conjunction with other graphical objects like Bargraphs or Stripchart plots. You usually compose the graphic by placing one or two scales for the horizontal and/or vertical axis and the graphic object itself. After you finish selecting your drawing area the specific dialog for the scale tool pops up:
This dialog allows you to select the range to use. The range style covers two dimensions, x and y for horizontal and vertical respectively. When selecting multiple objects like the three objects mentioned above (two scales and the graphical object) you can set the range for all three of them at the same time. In this case you want to use the x-range for the scale attached to the horizontal axis and the y-range for the scale attached to the vertical axis. In this dialog you can specify which range to use to dimension the scale. The following image shows a scale attached to the y-range and the range set to x: (0, 1); y: (0, 10):
The formats you can set for a scale object include: Color, Text, Range, and Orientation.
