Scaling

[ggunn]

I am using AutoCAD LT 2012, and I apologize in advance for the newbie questions.

I have been using AutoCAD for a few months and I've just been avoiding scaling issues, drawing things "big enough" and setting scaling in paper space by trial and (many) errors. I am trying to get a handle on scaling now and it's got me chasing my tail.

I created a new file with the acadlt.dwt template, and I got a sheet displayed in paper space, but what size paper is it? I don’t see any indicator in paper space that tells me what I am looking at.

I locked the scale at 1:1 and drew a rectangle the size of the viewport on a layer that I can see in model space, and I set the drawing units as millimeters.  I went into settings and set the grid spacing to 1.0 which I thought would give me a grid line per millimeter, but it only gives me 10 grid divisions along the long side of the rectangle, even when I zoom way in.  Surely I am not working with a 10mm long sheet of paper!

Can someone turn on a light for me?

[pendean]

PLOT command, look at the Paper Size entry.

PAGESETUP while in that paperspace>Modify Button, find the paper size entry.

Get in the habit of calling your tab with the sheet size in the name.

[ggunn]

Thanks, that is what I needed to do to set the paper size.  The problem I am having now is that although I have gone into drawing utilities and set my units to millimeters, the grid and the dynamic input remain in inches.

[ggunn]

It doesn't matter what I do in Drawing Utilties > Units, the units remain in inches.  Is this something that Autodesk did to dumb down AutoCAD for the LT version?

[pendean]

It's your drawing template or system setup: did you, during the installation, default to metric or not?

MEASUREMENT variable is a good place to start. Also read this topic:

http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2011/ENU/filesAUG/WS1a9193826455f5ffa23ce210c4a30acaf-78dc.htm

[ggunn]

During the installation?  Do you mean when I was installing the software? That can't be what you mean; I can't imagine that in order to use metric units I'd have to reinstall AutoCAD.

But I am obviously missing something. I start a new file and first thing, I go to the Drawing Utilities and set the units to millimeters.  I set the scale at 1:1, lock it, and start drawing some lines and dimensioning them.  The units are inches; I can tell by comparing the numbers to the size of the viewport in paper space. There are no units shown, by the way, it's just numbers.  Can't I get  the dimensioning tool to show units?

[Charles_Shade]

Isn't this more appropriate and along with MEASUREMENT?

MEASUREINIT

And set UNITS to Decimal?

[ggunn]

Thanks for all your help so far; here is my next challenge:

My predecessor created a viewport to bring in a three line electrical drawing from model space, and all her leaders and labels are in paper space. The scaling in the viewport is 0.006626. In order not to screw things up irretrievably, I have copied her three line to a different location in model space and made the minor edits I needed to do on the copy. Now I want to move the viewport over to the edited copy, and I need the scaling to be the same so that most of her labels and leaders will still register correctly. I have eleven of these and eleven one line drawings to do where I will encounter the same situation.

I am assuming that the scaling she arrived at she got by just rolling the scroll wheel back and forth until she got something that fit, but when I do that I will never hit 0.006626. I don't see a way to enter that number directly. Is there one?

[drjohn · Accepted solution]

Create your mview, double click inside ... press scroll wheel to pan to where you want to be ... double click outside the mview ....  select the viewport and go to properties panel and set the CUSTOM SCALE option to your desired scale factor ).006 whatever).

that should do it.  Don't forget to lock the viewport. 

HTH

Regards,

DJ