Restricting Lines / Polylines to 1/2" cuts or greater.. How?

[Anonymous]

I work in 2D.  I'm not AutoCad Pro by any means, so please bear with me.  I asked this question before, but the way I phrased it was mis-leading...

When I perform a basic "Line Draw" (Command - LD) or Polyline (Command - PL), I would like to restrict the actual length's to 1/2" cuts or greater.

Example:

a. I draw a polyline 13'-7.5"

b. (But) When I dimension it (e.g. precision set to 32nds), it comes out to be 13 ft - 7 & 11/32ths inches???  Why does this happen?  What am I doing wrong?  What setting needs to be changed?

How do these small, fractional cuts happen?

I want to change the system wide variable (create a "new profile" in big red A), so that any line drawn (LD, PL), will only be 0.5" or whole units?

[Patchy · Accepted solution]

If you draw a line with length =  13'-7.5" it will be exactly that length, but your dimension will be rounded off.

the length will always be 13'-7.5" when listed.

You can use SNAP to grid and spacing your grid to 1/2" and get what you need.

Attach your drawing and show us why it dimensioned 13 ft - 7 & 11/32ths inches.

[Kent1Cooper]

Did you have some running object-snap mode on, that might have taken the endpoint of the Line somewhere a little off from what you designated, snapping to some other object in the vicinity? 

Is the thing not quite orthogonal, but the Dimension is horizontal or vertical?  That would explain a Dimension value slightly less than the actual length.  Does DIMALIGNED from end to end give the correct dimension text?

How are you making it be the indicated length?  Are you "aiming" the cursor in the right direction and typing in the value?  If so, it should be accurate.  Or are you dragging the cursor and watching the status indicator for the length?  If you don't have Snap turned on, or even if you do but are not drawing orthogonally, that will be accurate only to within the precision of your Units settings, and if your Dimension text settings are for greater precision than your Units settings, it would explain what you describe.

I operate with Snap on to some meaningful value all the time except temporarily only in limited circumstances when I have reason to turn it off.  I have menu buttons to set common values.  I also have Ortho on most of the time, though not perhaps as consistently as Snap.

[GrantsPirate]

Is your command line docked?  If not then dock it for a while and see if that makes a difference.  I seem to remember a bug that docking the command line fixes, believe it or not.