Change units in old drawing from "Feet" to "US Survey Feet"

[mcloughlin]

We are given an old LDD drawing with points but no point file.  

We open it in Civil 3D 2014.  All of the monument symbols are a tad off the boundary angle points, which leads us to believe that the accursed "US Survey Foot" setting must be called into play.  

How is this done in an existing drawing?  We type "Units," but have only options for feet, inches, meters, etc.  Also parsecs, by the way, but this is a smallish bit of land.  

I'm sure it's very simple and has been explained before in this forum, but my search pulled up nothing, as has searching the "help" function in AC3D.  Again, how do we check the units and assign "US Survey Feet" as the preferred unit in an old drawing?  

Thanks.

[Pointdump]

McL,

"All of the monument symbols are a tad off the boundary angle points, which leads us to believe that the accursed 'US Survey Foot' setting must be called into play."

If a hunch is all you have to go on to determine what the units are, I'd send the field crew out to re-collect the points, and start over with a nice, new, clear Imperial template.



"We type 'Units,' but have only options for feet, inches, meters, etc."

There's a subtle distinction between AutoCAD units and Civil 3D units. Always set the Civil 3D units in Drawing Settings, which will change the AutoCAD units. Doing it the other way around is not good.

Dave

[sboon]

An old LDD drawing will not have any Civil3d settings or styles at all.  If you open it the program will apply some default settings based on your installation, and it will use a set of standard styles.  Better to start a new drawing from a Civil3d template, then insert your old drawing as a block and explode it. 

Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate

[IanMcClain · Accepted solution]

Changing the settings from international feet to survey feet now won't fix the problem, though it's always good to be accurate.

Are the symbols all off in a consistent amout or direction? If so you may be able to scale the points to coincide with the linework.

Are there any LDD points to corroborate if the linework or the symbols are in right spots? It could just be sloppy CAD work.

[mcloughlin]

Yes, scaling worked after some effort, but it's kind of daunting to think that all those years of old LDD work might require such treatment. Thanks for the thought.