I have a very simple surface. All of the elevations defining it, are set in feet. When I click on the surface it tells me my max and min elevations are in feet matching the points that I have defining the surface.
Here is the kicker, when I run a distance it is measuring the Z distance in inches and not feet. As you can see by the attached image the distance is 95' but the elevation change is 1 3/8". The actual points defining the surface are 1.28' difference. If I were to do a spot elevation on the surface, it would give me the correct elevation in feet.
Can anyone tell me whats going on? I am guessing that this is some sort of variable that I have missed, but damned if I can find it.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Unfortunately that didn't work. It just changed my measurements to inches instead. But kept the z measurement the same.
Any other ideas?
I've always worked in metric so I don't really know how the imperial settings work in C3D, but I know that it is always meant to be feet, not inches. It looks like all your distances are off by a factor of 12, so you may have started up wrong from the begining, I don't know.
Could really do with someone else jumping in here to help, but unfortunatly when the topic is marked as solved others may not look into it.
Mark Green
Working on Civil 3D in Canada
Your advice lead me to the solution. Our office has been bouncing back and forth between imperial and metric and I don't have enough experience to do this successfully.
Here is the solution. Autocad wants the drawing in Decimal Feet. I went back and scaled down the drawing by 12 so that all measurements of units were in feet. (I.E. 9.50' instead of 9'-6") Now scaling the drawing also scales the Z elevation so I had to follow the following link to redifine my points after I scaled. See this thread for how to do that (http://www.civil4d.com/2009/10/scale-your-points-keep-the-elevations/)
And now, everything makes sense again.
I'll have to reset my viewports, but small price to pay.
Make sure that you are setting your units correctly in the Drawing Settings. Go to the Toolspace and on the Settings tab - Right click on the active drawing and select, Edit Drawing Settings. Set up your units on Units and Zone tab and check 'Set AutoCAD Variables to match'.
Here is how I have mine set up for feet
Allen Jessup
CAD Manager - Designer
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