switch between imperial and metric dimensions

[traditional.builds]

So I am a bit new to AutoCad but have a question that may be rather simple, hopefully.

We are a metric shop and draw all of the plans in millimeters, but most of the USA only understands imperial so when we are sending plans to clients and other people on job sites they request imperial measurements. Since we build everything in our shop using the metric system, our plans naturally start in mm. Our problem is when we need to send the drawings to other people we need to convert to inches and feet.

I do understand that I can stack dimensions so that each dimension shows metric and imperial, but a lot of our drawings become very cluttered, and our workers do not need to see the inches/feet to build. It is only when the drawings leave the shop when they need to be converted.

Is there a way to simply "switch" all the current dimensions from metric to imperial without having stacked dimensions, or without having to dimension everything twice? My original thought was to dimension everything in metric on a single layer and then duplicate the layer and switch to imperial but I am finding that to either be more difficult than I thought or not possible.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions that could help it would be incredibly appreciated!

Thank you in advance,

Mike

[qnologi · Accepted solution]

How to change existing dimensions from imperial to metric in AutoCAD | AutoCAD 2020 | Autodesk Knowl...

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The easiest way I know is to simply go into your current Dimstyle, go to Primary Units and then change the Scale Factor from 1.000 to .03937.  That will do it.  I've dealt with mm to inches for 28 years in our company so it is simply a reciprocal of 25.4.  If you were dimming in inches, you could just change this scale to 25.4 to get you to mm.  Your actual drawing units will still be in mm, so it is just changing how ACAD will calculate the dim value.

If you are creating a PDF for your Vendor/Customer you can then create the PDF and then change the scale factor back to 1.000.  All of the other dim features like arrows and text will stay the same, only the dim value will change.

jg

[traditional.builds]

That still helps, thank you!