profile view station text height

[granite07]

The text height on my profile view is really small, I followed the instructions for text height given in another thread but the text has not changed, the profile interval did change so it seems like I was changing the right settings. The file originally was metric and is now imperial after changing the drawing units.

[JessieQuilatan]

Does it look correct through a regenerated paperspace viewport?

[granite07]

I am a VDC engineer and do not print out anything - what is a 'regenerated paperspace viewport'

[JessieQuilatan]

I will stick with troubleshooting in model space then.

Check the scale indicator on the lower right of your screen. (highlighted in red in the image below). Try changing the scale and see how it affects your text size.

[granite07]

scale is 1:1

[JessieQuilatan]

If your scale is 1:1, your drawing may still be set up for metric. It would be 1"=1' if set up for feet.

You may have done this already, but to make sure, go to the Prospector-->Settings TAB--> right click on the drawing name--> "Edit drawing settings". Check the drawing units.

[granite07]

The scale was 1:1" which I changed back to 1:1 and on your note changed it to 1':1" and now the profile text is correct; the drawing settings unit was inches and I changed that to feet. Appreciate your help and it looks like this is the last of the three locations for defining C3D unit ot measure.

[granite07]

The profile view text is now visible but my stations are now in inches. I changed my scale back to 1:1" but the the drawing settings unit has feet and meter as options and does not have inches as an option. I'd like to find a happy medium between my corridor stations (QTO is also out of scale) and the profile text height.

[granite07]

a poly line measures 94'-9.450" in properties, 1137 in quantity takeoff (apparently inches) and 94'-9.427" in inquiry distance

[wfberry]

You should not be seeing architect distances in Civil 3D.  Look at aecdwgsetup and see what kind of units you have.

Bill

[JessieQuilatan]

granite07-

After seeing your measurements, I think I see what is happing in your drawing now!

If one AutoCAD unit represents one inch in your drawing, then the solution may be to scale down all your model space geometry a factor of 1/12, so one AutoCAD unit represents one foot.

[granite07]

aecdwgsetup has the settings I am looking for.  The dwg units are now back to inches and set the volume from cu ft to cu yd. I am suffficiently confused by the AutoCAD + C3D + Imperial/Metric + notYetDiscovered unit of measure settings that I will make a system map of the drawing setup, ambient settings, and scaling function to help me understand how these relate and which aspects of C3D they affect - something like this proposed graphic is a nice addition to the C3D documentation.

Note: the change from feet to inches stopped C3D for awhile and is upto 15.5GB memory as one 3.7GHz core chugs along at 100%: assumed locked up after a half-hour and restarted.

[Sinc]

Civil 3D is designed to be used in either feet or meters.  Not inches or millimeters.

[granite07]

yes, but this specific case is different than 'meant for' - the feet setting results in stationing in inches and inch setting results in stationing in feet. A 'wish' is that changing from feet to inch to meter to khet to whatever was cleaner; this process is helping me learn the function, behavior and limits of C3D units. This file was drawn in metric to english scale and then converted (without the C3D conversion tool) to imperial to test the conversion between units of measure in C3D and has allowed focusing on the C3D unit of measure feature.

There are 7 ways to change the unit of measure (uom) and the style the units are presented in, these are:

command: aecdwgsetup - uom andstyle

drawing utilities/drawing settings/units and zones - style and scale

drawing utilities/drawing settings/ambient settings - style and uom?

command: units - style

command: -units - style

command: -dwgunits - uom

Changing the uom from inches to feet was fairly quick but from feet back to inches is locking up my machine. In inches the profile text is really small so once converted back I am back to resolving the profile text when in inch.

[Sinc]

Again, Civil 3D is not designed to be used in any units except Feet and Meters.  In other words, your items in modelspace should be drawn at 1 modelspace unit = 1 foot, or 1 modelspace unit = 1 meter.  If you have 1 modelspace unit = 1 inch, that won't work in C3D.

From there, you can use Styles to display units in other formats.  Although that's limited - Autodesk didn't realize that we would sometimes need to display data in inches and fractions of an inch.  For example, when doing a plot showing depths, we may want to label a volume surface with a grid of spot elevations that are formatted in inches and fractions of an inch.  Civil 3D won't let us do this (although there is a workaround involving Cogo Points and Excel).

[granite07]

Yes, but it did work in inch - see several posts earlier in this thread where I changed it to feet - I'd like to change it back to inch since it is preferable to have my corridor stations in feet over being able to read the profile view text.

Each time I try to convert from feet to inch the machine stops resonding.

The graphic is compiled from information shared is several blogs - sorry to the original authors for not properly citing you.

[Sinc]

From what you've posted, it seems that you have a drawing where 1 modelspace unit = 1 inch.  Despite the fact that "inches" is a setting in some places, Civil 3D is NOT designed to work in drawings where 1 modelspace unit = 1 inch.  That's the most likely reason why you were having the problem that caused you to start this thread in the first place.

To get C3D to work correctly, you must have your modelspace objects drawn so that 1 modelspace unit = 1 foot.

[granite07]

but it did work correctly with the exception of profile view text height

to use the CS vocabulary - yes, I understand that from a 'neat' perspective it was not intended, but from a 'scruffy' perspective it pragmatically worked; as joe dirt's dad said "how exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work? -It just does." and C3D just did work in inch

[granite07]

addendum:

I researched the issue of modelspace units and found this Drawing units article that summarized the topic from the traditional view. There are architects and engineers, and they are going to plot this to scale so it can be dimensioned with a scale ruler.

That is not relevant here. I am a VDC engineer and will never plot anything to paper, the plot function can be removed from C3D. Second, I am not an architect or an engineer and do not 'think' in a given way about fractions of a unit, I am a constructor and work in whatever unit works best for the specific conditions.

This may be why C3D works just fine for me in inches but does not work for everyone.

[Sinc]

I'm not trying to argue with you, but it doesn't sound like C3D was working for you.  You said your labels are too small, and your QTO was wrong.  These problems are all directly related to the fact that C3D is only designed to be used with 1 msu = 1 foot, or 1 msu = 1 meter.  And it sounds like you have stuff drawn where 1 msu = 1 inch.