Drawing Scale List - Unit Issues

[Anonymous]

I am having a scaling issue in Autocad Architecture 2018. It used to be that if I changed my acadiso units to meters, I had to go in and change the scales, the dialogue said ___ paper units = ___drawing units, so for 1:1000 I would write 1 in the first blank and 1000 in the second. Now it says ___paper mm = to ___drawing meters. If I now make a 1 to 1000 scale, which would imply 1 paper mm equals 1 drawing meter, the program does the wrong math and the actual scale is 1! This math checks out if the dialogue had not changed, aka 1 paper unit equals 1 model unit, but because the wording has changed this no longer makes sense. So for now, I have to write 1 paper mm equals 1000 drawing meters to get .001 scale, which is wrong but is apparently what works. Am I missing something here or are added mm and meter captions actually wrong?

[pendean]

At the commandline type -DWGUNITS (there is a dash in the name), hit <enter>, and see what your current file is set to use for units.

[leothebuilder]

In the UNITS dialog there is no option to change to METERS.

You are using decimal units, and they can represent anything you want, millimeters or meters, or light years.

You can change the INSERTION units to METERS which means anything you insert will use METERS.

The annotative scale will allow you to add a 1:1000 scale.

This means your annotative content will shrink by 1000 to give the proper representation in paper space.

[Anonymous]

Hi leothebuilder,

Thank you for your response. Agreed, it were just decimal units there would be no issue as this would all make sense. My dialogues, however, seem to have meters. Both in my unit dialogue and in the scale dialogue. When I change my unit dialogue to mm, I get the same paper millimeter = some value of dwg millimeter, in which case the math checks out. When I change the units to meters in my drawing, this same dialogue becomes paper millimeter = some value of dwg meter, but the underlying math remains the same, which makes the expression in the dialogue incorrect. I can work around this of course, but I am wondering if this is an error in the dialogue or if I am missing something. In a concrete example, in the last image below, in order to get 1/1000xp or 1:1000, the program is showing 1mm = 1000 meters in the dialogue. Technically that would mean 1:1,000,000. All I am trying to say is that if the dialogue dropped units altogether, or stuck to only mm, there would be no problem, it just seems to me that someone tried to get fancy and didn't finish the job. 

Also, I tried to find the drawing unit dialogue you pulled up without the meter option and could not find it.

Thanks for diving into this question!

meters in unitswhen the dialogue says 1 paper mm equals 1000 drawing meter, it is actually giving me 1 to 1000.

[leothebuilder]

I think that you are confused to what these drawing scales do.

These settings do not change the actual scale of the drawing/geometry.

You should always draw 1:1 in model space, doesn't matter if you use meters or millimeters.

The drawing scale setting ONLY controls at what size annotative objects are placed in your drawing.

Annotative objects are objects such as text and dimension that you want to appear at the correct size

in your paper space viewport.  You can choose to totally ignore the annotative scale setting and use non-annotative objects. It's a personal choice.

[leothebuilder]

P.s. highlight the drawing scale setting 1:100wrong and click on the EDIT button and see what the input is.

[dbroad]

I agree with Leo.  Once you see the settings, t probably has 1:1000000 rather than 1:1000 and the scale properties will make it clear that someone input the wrong ratio.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your continued interest in this!

I definitely only draw full scale, and I do not use annotative objects. The only reason I change the drawing units is to have a standard input in meters across my drawings, ie if I am jumping into the drawing of someone who drafts in mm or anything else. When I jump into a drawing drafted in mm and switch to m I am prompted to rescale, so his 1 length polyline is .001 of mine. Painting the full picture for you not because I think I am doing this right, but rather because I am curious to see if you catch errors in my logic.

Regardless of the units, mm or m or anything, 1 to 1000 is 1 to 1000, that is of course clear. What's happening though is that when I switch the units (without scaling or anything) from mm to m, the dialogues go from 1 paper mm to 1000 drawing mm to 1 paper mm to 1 drawing Meter for the default 1 to 1000 scale. The scale however, if checked, is in fact 1/1. My suspicion is that the math behind the dialogue is working on the units aka it knows 1m is 1000mm, but it is taking both 1s without units to conduct the math of the scale itself. When units aren't present in the dialogue box, this is a non issue. So, interestingly, I did what you guys mentioned. I first created a new scale called "1:1000 wrong" because I had not saved it, and the dialogue box that came up was unitless! So 1 to 1000. But then when I went back in to edit it, it was back to being semantically wrong 1 mm to 1000 meters. All this to say that I think if the dialogue drops the units everything makes sense again. 

Thanks again for your thoughts and help.

looking good for adding scale

units come in and stop making sense

for editing units are in again and make no sense

[dbroad]

Change the right box to 1 meter.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for responding. That is my point exactly. The default scale 1 to 1000 has the right box as 1m, as you are mentioning, but it actually sets the viewport to 1 to 1. Which is why I created "1 to 1000 wrong", because thought i is mathematically incorrect in the dialogue (ie. 1mm to 1000m), it is giving me a viewport at 1:1000. Again, I understand how to get what I need, but I am posting this because I think there is an error in the program in the way the units are loaded into the dialogue without the corresponding math that would make the expression correct. 

[leothebuilder]

There is nothing wrong with the Autocad math.

The dialog says that 1 mm paper represents 1000 meters. 

Since 1 meter is 1000 millimeter the correct expression should be 1 paper mm is 1 meter (e.g. 1000 mm)

If your input is that 1 mm in paper should represent 1000 meters what you are really telling Autocad to

do is calculate a 1:1,000,000 scale.   (1:1 million)

Unfortunately your own math is wrong.

[leothebuilder]

p.s. I am not sure what discipline your working in but generally architectural work is in millimeters. Using meters is generally used in surveying. 

[dbroad]

It might help if you post part of the drawing. (Some geometry and a layout with a problem viewport).

[Anonymous]

Thank you @dbroad , see attached file. 

@leothebuilder sorry I think my nomenclature has thrown our discussion off. My "1:1000 wrong" scale creates a viewport that is actually 1/1000xp but the dialogue (1mm = 1000m) is what is wrong, as you've correctly noted. If the dialogue were actually producing what the expression says, what you say is exactly what would happen, I would get 1:1,000,000. But in reality this scale is creating a 1:1000 viewport scale. I created this "wrong" scale because the default 1:1000 scale, which does say 1mm = 1m in the dialogue, produces a viewport that is 1/1xp. So if I wanted to actually create a 1:1,000,000 scale in this dialogue, I would actually have to write 1mm = 1,000,000m, and so on. Anyway, hopefully the file can replicate what I am saying on your system. 

Interestingly, when I cleaned up my file to send, and set one of the viewports to the default 1:1000, I clicked out of the properties and then clicked back in. When I clicked back in it had defaulted to 1:1 in the standard scale box! 

Lastly, I think the most telling moment is how when I created the "1 to 1000 wrong" scale in my previous post, the "add scale" dialogue was unitless, so I just input 1 to 1000. After creating it though, the program slapped on units to each of those numbers, creating the confusing expression 1mm to 1000m that lead to my post in the first place. Hope I have clarified! Thanks for your time.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

Your mistake was setting paper space to plot 1/1000th of what it should be.

[Anonymous]

So simple! Thank you for going down this rabbit hole. My instinct in doing that was to keep the model space "units" the same as the paper space "units", but of course that is irrelevant when the page is set up in mm. Thanks again to both of you.