Viewport Scale feet/inches. Old problem new confusion.

[Anonymous]

I am a humble seeker trying to understand the mysteries of AutoCAD.  Perhaps the answer is as obvious as water to a fish.

Drawing is attached.

Units set to Decimal Feet

Circle radius of 1 (i.e. 1 unit, or in this case 1 foot)

First viewport Scale 1:1

And yet - the circle has a radius of 1 inch, while I expected it to have a radius of 1 foot.

Second viewport Scale of 1"= 1'-0" (8.33%)

And yet - the circle appears to have a radius of 1/12 of an inch, while I expected a circle with radius of 1 inch.

To AutoCAD a unit is a unit is a unit.

And yet - the proverbial rubber meets the proverbial road in the page setup, where ANSI D really does mean 22" x 34" with reference (roughly) to the width of the (actual) human thumb.

Can someone help me to see?

[murray-clack]

In my company, we have two Dimstyles.  One for Architectural inch units, and one for Architectural decimal units

See attached file

[Anonymous]

Thanks Murray - 

Yes, I am curious why "Unit Format" in the dimension style dialog seems to override the drawing units dialog.

I would expect that a one-unit-long line in a drawing with units set to feet would dimension as

1'-0" with unit format set to Architectural

1.00 with unit format set to Decimal

Instead we get 1" and 1.00 as you show.

[pendean]

Drawing Units do not controls everything: you the user determines what dimstyles do follow or ignore. Does that help?

[Anonymous]

Hmm - maybe.

It is at best unintuitive that the dimension style can turn what I thought was a 12" line into a 1" line, effectively scaling the drawing by 1/12.

I suppose this functionality accommodates a difference of worldviews at the discipline-level (architectural vs engineering) that pre-existed AutoCAD.

I work at a wastewater utility.  One drawing set will have both civil-scale drawings and instrument-scale drawings.  Remembering what's what, and sharing content between them can be confounding.  Such is life.

[Bob_Zurunkle]

OP without looking at your drawing it sounds like the difference between units being set to 'architectural - feet and inches' and being set to 'engineering'. In the first setting, 1 unit is an inch. In the second, one unit is one unit, often used to represent one foot.