topic HOW TO DRAW IN METERS IN AUTOCAD in AutoCAD Forum

HOW TO DRAW IN METERS IN AUTOCAD

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 15:07:52 GMT

how to draw in meters in autocad..in 'units' window i selected meters...but when i draw the lines it takes my units as inches..wen i measured it i came to know...i just need your help to tell me that "HOW CAN I DRAW MY DRAWINGS DIRECTLY IN METERS" or "HOW CAN I CONVERT MY FEET/INCHES DRAWING INTO METERS"

Re: HOW TO DRAW IN METERS IN AUTOCAD

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 15:13:05 GMT

AutoCAD is UNITLESS, and doesn't undestand inches or meters.

In the below DDUNITS dialog, you are specifying the units of the drawing when inserting blocks.

You can setup your dimensions to user METERS as the dimension unit, but you draw in 'unitless' units.

Re: HOW TO DRAW IN METERS IN AUTOCAD

Patchy — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 15:26:08 GMT

You should to start a new drawing using ACADISO.DWT that is the metric drawing already setup for you by Autodesk.

Re: HOW TO DRAW IN METERS IN AUTOCAD

leeminardi — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 17:40:21 GMT

Working with units in AutoCAD is a bit weird as you never really set the units you are working with. It is correct that the units are typically unitless (if that's not a contradiction). The units specifed for the paper size mayl influnence units, particullarly when plotting a drawing.

For your exiting drawing I suggest the following:

Let’s say you started your drawing with the following defaults.

- Paper size was specified in inches.

- Units were set to Architectural.

Now draw a line 10 feet long. Measure its length with dist. It should read 10’-0”

Using the UNITS command change Type to decimal and dist should give you 120.0 for the length.

Now scale all by 0.0254 about point 0,0,0 and the length of the line should be 3.048 which is the length in meters.

~Lee