Drawing Units

[Anonymous]

My model was created with ft. as the unit.  When I create a drawing dimensions come in as inches.  How do I change my drawing units for dimensions to show as feet, not inches or mm?

[James.Youmatz]

Hi @Anonymous,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Community!

Are you asking in general, or for a drawing that is already created? Off of the top of my head, I am unsure if you can change the active units of a pre-existing drawing (but let me check on that). If you want to change the units of a new drawing all you need to do is go to File, New Drawing from Design and then in the dialog that pops up there should be a unit field where you can toggle the units.

Edit: Missed where you were asking for feet not inches. My apologies! See @jchase123 answer below.

Thanks,

[JDMather]

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James.Youmatz wrote:...

...to change the units of a new drawing all you need to do is go to File, New Drawing from Design and then in the dialog that pops up there should be a unit field where you can toggle the units....

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[jchase123]

Hi srfranz,

Although you can model using Feet in the Design work-space, when using Fusion Drawings currently you can only dimension using either MM or Inches. I don't know when we will have the option to use feet units in Fusion 360 Drawings. Here is the Drawings road-map: http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/2d-drawings-check-roadmap/ That type of Unit might be something we work on when we tackle the "Advanced Dimensions" bubble on the road-map.

The only workaround I can think of right now to get dimensions with feet values would be a bit manual and tedious. You can double click on a dimension, click on the far right side of the dimension, hit backspace to delete the contents then just manually type in the Foot dimension value. This would be very tedious if you had a large number of dimensions to place, but if you only had a few you might be able to use this as a quick workaround until feet units are supported.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,

Justin Chase 

[cmiller66 · Accepted solution]

Hi srfranz,

As Justin mentioned, we do not currently support units other than inch/mm.  In an inch-based drawing you can change the unit format to fractional from decimal if that helps (Annotation Settings button at the bottom of the drawing window > Linear Unit Format).

One very important caveat if you do overwrite the original value - as soon as the default value is changed, any associativity of the value to the actual design dimensions will be broken, so the dimension value will no longer update correctly if the design is modified.  There's also the possibility of introducing human error when manually overwriting the default value.

I'd encourage you to add Architectural/Feet-Inch unit drawing support request to the IdeasStation so that the community can vote on it.  We typically try to prioritize our feature work on those most requested by users.  Also, just curious, what are you designing?

Thanks,
Chris

[Anonymous]

I used fusion to plan an inground pool and backyard, ala my need for using units of feet.  I think Fusion has some real potential and look forward to continued capabilities and improvements as the platform matures.  Thanks for responding!!

[Anonymous]

Wow.  I'm amazed.  (And disappointed)  Any architectural use of this cool tool will need "Ft-Inch" style of dimensioning.

I've spent a bunch of time learning Fusion 360 and have done some very nice and precise models of a small house (cabin) I plan to build.

I've since spent way too much time trying to figure out how to get the dimensions in a drawing to match the "ft-in" format I used for the model.

In my "Preferences", Drawing > Annotation Units > "Inherit from design" sure seemed to indicate that my drawing dimensions would match.

But not so.

Well, at least this usefull thread allows me to quit beating my head against the wall and move on to some other method of creating drawings.

(I still know how to draft with pencil and paper!)    8^)

Thanks,

Mike 

[bustedchain]

This is a dreadful limitation.   I sure hope Autodesk will allow the user to use consistent units from design through to drawing.  It is ridiculous to model something in feet and not be able to use that in drawing mode.

[Stodden.design]

Being able to model in feet, I should be able to dimension in feet.

Any timeline on when such a basic feature should be available?

[docara]

This is why the majority of the world uses the metric system

[Bertho_Boman]

It is an old thread and hopefully fixed by now and I am probably missing something obvious:

I am designing a house using meters as unit and that works fine.  When creating a 2-D drawing it converts it to mm.

How can I display the dimensions in meters?

[Anonymous]

Can I have meters, please!

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @Anonymous 

We are working on adding additional units to drawings. In addition to inch & mm, soon you will be able to specify feet, cm or meters. I'll be updating the public roadmap in the next week or so, keep an eye out.

[bustedchain]

So, how many more years to be able to join two line segments like any other
modern CAD system in the last 10 to 20 years?

Since Autodesk is finally getting around to things that should have been
done on day 1, and all. Units and joining lines together... That would be
amazing.

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @bustedchain 

I'd love to spend some time understanding your specific use case. If you're up for it, here's a link to my calendar, you can set up a meeting with me and we go over your requirement on a zoom call.

Kind Regards

[bustedchain]

No need.

I've got 30+ lines making a complex shape either hand drawn or imported
from something else. I want to join them together so I can make a tool
path or so I can do some extrusion. They need to be joined for any number
of reasons.

I can join any number of lines together in AutoCAD, but here we are years
later and Fusion 360 is just now getting around to adding support for
additional units. Maybe joining line segments could be next.

I'm not really interested in investing much time trying to make Fusion 360
better ever since they took my startup license away from me. I've got this
$12,000 Mill, but I'm stuck using Rhino and madCAM because Autodesk decided
to change who qualifies for startup status and screw hobbyists that have
Mills and Routers.

I still use it a little for 3d print stuff, but my use of it sure has been
neutered. If I was making a bunch of money with it, I'd gladly pay the
licensing fee.

Not your fault the company pulled the rug out from under us, but it sure
doesn't make me want to spend any of my time trying to help make the
product better. Maybe if Autodesk valued contributions from the community
I'd invest a lot more time.

Besides, there is already a thread for this asking for join capability. It
isn't a new concept and I'm not the first person asking for it for years
now.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

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@bustedchain wrote:

I've got 30+ lines making a complex shape []¶ I want to join them together so I can make a toolpath or so I can do some extrusion. 

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I will only show this example. There is no need to connect line elements for extrusion, nor for tool paths.

günther

[berx2]

Middle of Sept 2021. Latest update and still no metres in drawing units. Your roadmap says it was ready to go in August.

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi @berx2 

I updated the public roadmap just after the August release, changing the status, to let everyone know that "More Units" would most likely be available in the next major release of Fusion 360.

This next release if anticipated in the next few weeks.

[ClintBrown3D]

Hi Everyone

The September release of Fusion goes live today. We've introduced a lot of new features, but the great news, is that "More Dimension Units" is now live.

Fusion drawings now support Inch, Feet, Millimetres, Centimetres and Meters. In addition to these units, we support formatting for Inch & Feet (Architectural, Fractional, Engineering, Decimal).

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/september-2021-product-update-whats-new/#Drawing