Imperial and metric drawings scaling in viewport

[MrMuscl3]

Almost all old dimensional drawings I work with are drawn in imperial scale (inches) but the measures in the drawings are metric. When we create new dimensional drawings we draw them at metric scale as millimeters. Whenever I work with old dimensional drawings and I have to print them, these drawings give me imperial scales when zooming viewport even though these are really drawn as metric scale. When I reset the imperial scales to be metric, the zooming considers modelspace drawing units to be inches.

AutoCAD has option for default scalelist which is found right click model or paperspace -> options -> user preferences -> default scale list. Changing this to metric is overrided whenever I open old drawing which has imperial drawing units. I allways have to change these drawings DWGUNITS to be mm (without scaling anything in the picture) instead of inches and after that reset the default scalelist to metric when zooming to viewport at paperspace.

Is there anyway to tell autocad to interpret that all opened drawings use metric scale automatically so there would be no need to change DWGUNITS for all dimensional drawings and reset the scalelist to be metric?

This is useless work since all our dimensional drawings are drawn in millimeters even though the original drawing creator did not change these drawings DWGUNITS to mm.

[pendean · Accepted solution]

No, AutoCAD simply uses what the file is set to for that task. AKA the file creator still has full creative control (right or wrong).

You have to fix/convert your 'problem' DWG files: it can be as simple as INSERTing them into your own preset empty template files, or addressing each item individually in each DWG file as you see fit based on the task/time that you have allotted.