Setting up to connect to shp and use a state plane coordinate system

[Anonymous]

so heres the deal. i am a GIS who is trying to teach myself autocad and this is the scenario. 

-I have a shp file that is in a nad83 ms west state plane coord system us feet.

- I want to display that in autocad civil by using the connection option.

- When it is put in of ocurse it is in decimal units. (45.8)

- I would like it to show in engineering units. (ex. 45' 8")

this is what is happening:

- After being imported it will show the 45.8 what ever.

- When i change it to engineering units it becomes 3' 9".

- I want it to be set to a scale that when it does come in it is read in foot not inches.

- I have read multiple forums and trying several different options and cannot get it to work.

- Does anyone have any suggestions?

i understand autocad does not work  by ft or in but by drawing units and that in some way you have to trick it to think it is reading feet.

please help.

[Anonymous]

bsims,

45.8 decimal feet would equal 45' 9.6" or 45' 10" rounded.

It looks like you discovered that 3'9" is 45.8 inches divided by 12 to convert it to feet.

the drawing you intended to import the information to must be set to inches for distance.   this can be changed before importing the image by going to the prospector and clicking on the settings tabe and right clicking on the drawing name and picking edit drawing settings.   look for ambient settings - distance.

what you refer to as engineering units, is actually architectural units.  feet and inches.

autocad may not distinguish feet and inches but civil 3d only work in feet or meters.

[AllenJessup]

In Civil 3D and Map you must have the Units set to Decimal. That works for Decimal Feet and Meters. You cannot set it to Architectural or Engineering. BTW Engineering Units express distances as Feet and Decimal Inches, using one drawing unit as an inch.

All Geofefeence coordinate systems are in either Meters of Decimal Feet. So anything that uses any type of inches is out. You also need to set your Ambient Settings correctly. In the Toolspace on the Settings tab it-clk on the active drawing and select Edit Drawing Settings. Click on the Units and Zone tab and it should look something like this:

You will notice that while vanilla AutoCAD doesn't know anything about Feet, Civil 3D does. Set the correct coordinate system for you location. Apologies if you already know all this.

So the basic answer is that you can't display distances in Civil 3D in Feet and inches. The best you can do is develop a DimmStyle of Label Style that will show feet and inches.

BTW. You don't trick AutoCAD to measure in Feet. You have to trick yourself that one drawing unit is a Foot or a Meter or an Angstrom or Lightyear or Parsec. Or maybe a banana. What can be done is to tell AutoCAD and the vertical programs that when it encounters one drawing unit to display it in a certain way and when it has to convert to use a specific equivalence.

Good luck on learning Civil 3D. If you need more advice just post again. We're full of it! (Advice that is.)

Allen