topic Re: Changing Input Units in Civil 3D Forum

Changing Input Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 01:02:51 GMT

I haven't been able to find a direct answer to this question, although I'm sure with such a simple one it exists. My units when I draw anything measure in inches (using Dimensions to determine this). How do I set up a drawing so that any 1 unit is equal to 1 foot?

Thanks!

Re: Changing Input Units

rl_jackson — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 01:42:29 GMT

In C3D 1 unit = 1 foot, if your trying to convert architectural units to survey feet you that's a 1/12 ratio

Re: Changing Input Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 01:49:21 GMT

I know I can scale everything to be 12 times as large, although I'm not sure if that's what you're suggesting. Is there some setting that will automatically sent the standard drawing unit to be measured in feet?

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something.

Re: Changing Input Units

Jeew-m — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 02:14:20 GMT

Hi,

Are you talking about THIS.

Thanks

Re: Changing Input Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 02:18:29 GMT

I don't think so. I've got it in feet for the units, but when I draw a 20 unit line and dimension the line with annotation, it would read as 20 inches or 1' 8".

Re: Changing Input Units

rl_jackson — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 02:51:49 GMT

In C3D 1 unit = 1 foot. The only units that work in C3D are International Feet, US Survey Feet (circa 2017) and Meters. If you want to draw in inches (or decimals thereof, as a simple solution in C3D) you'll have to scale it x12 to reflect the 1 unit = 1 foot as only generic ACAD has the ability to set 1 unit = 1 inch (default). If you want your dimensions to reflect 1' 8" then that can be done in the dimension style

Re: Changing Input Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 02:56:53 GMT

The issue isn't that I want to draw in inches, it's that any line I draw, when I use linear dimension, it gets dimensions in inches when I change the annotation from decimal to anything else. I'm drawing a 128.5 unit line that I want to get annotated as 128' 6", but it comes out as 10' 9".

Re: Changing Input Units

rl_jackson — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 04:09:59 GMT

OK so now we need to know is this a C3D label (i.e. bearing and distance) which would require an equation, or just a regular dimension that could be done with either a scale factor or alternate units.

Re: Changing Input Units

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 13:17:22 GMT

I think I may have gotten it fixed. I applied scale factor to the standard annotation and it looks like it corrected my issue. Thank you for that!

Re: Changing Input Units

tcorey — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 15:06:56 GMT

You appear to have settled on a workaround, but the basic error still exists, right?

I often see this problem when an engineer opens a drawing provided by an architect or builder. Even though you have set UNITS to Decimal, the drawing is still stubbornly inch-based.

On the Settings tab of Toolspace, right click the drawing name, very near the top of the dialog.

From the shortcut menu, Edit Drawing Settings. Go to Units and Zone tab. Your Drawing Units might be set to Inches. Set that to Feet.

The safer way to deal with an a outside drawing is to create your blank drawing from a known template, then insert the outside drawing into that, exploded if required. This way, your Dimension styles and Civil 3D Label Styles will already be setup correctly. No additional scaling of styles will be necessary.

Depending on a couple of settings, there is the question of scaling the incoming drawing during INSERT. Read up on InsUnits, InsUnitsDefTarget and InsUnitsDefSource.