Civil 3D Scale Factor

[Anonymous]

I need help drawing a line. When I draw a 10' foot line using the "Create line by bearing" command it will draw a 10" inch line. In the same drawing, if I use the polyline command and enter the same measurements and bearings I get the correct measurements but it doesn't match the aerial map. What am I doing wrong?

[Pointdump]

J,

Welcome to the Autodesk Forum.

Sounds like your drawing units are in inches. Type DWGUNITS in the command line. You want either Feet or Meters for Civil 3D to work right.

Dave

[rkmcswain]

When I draw a 10 unit long line, and I list it, it tells me it's 10 units long. That can be inches, feet, meters, light years, whatever you like.

How do you know it's 10 inches long?

[Anonymous]

I already have my dwg units set to feet.

[Pointdump]

J,

OK, let's see what you've got. Please post your drawing with the 10-unit thingie.

Dave

[AllenJessup]

Also check AECDWGSETUP.

[Anonymous]

Please see the attached drawing. It's showing 2 lines both at 45°. One is a polyline 10'feet long. The small line was drawn using the "Create line by bearing" command. If you see the properties of the small line, it is 10" inches in length. I entered 10' when creating the line. I know that I am missing something but just can't figure it out.

[rkmcswain]

Also consider the "reporting" units, or how AutoCAD reports the length of something. Your LUNITS = 3. I changed it to 2 and your short line = 10 and your long line = 120 (still that could be inches, feet, miles, mm, km, whatever...)

[Jeff_M]

Your drawing units are set to Engineering, this must be decimal for C3D to work, else you get the inches. (This is the same as the LUNITS being 3 and resetting to 2 as @rkmcswain noted).

[Anonymous]

I understand that one unit in C3D can be inches, feet, miles etc. Please see the attached drawing. It clearly explains which line is feet and which is inches. They were both drawn using the same length of 10'. I'm tired of having to scale my drawings because everything is drawn in inches. I just don't know what am I missing. Somebody please help.

[Jeff_M]

You've been told twice now what the problem is. C3D MUST use the decimal unit type. Engineering & Architectural both use inches as the base unit. Make sure this is set in your drawing template and you will never have the issue again.

[Pointdump]

J,

@rkmcswain and @Jeff_M are right.

Your drawing is set to "Engineering" units, which is the decimal version of Architectural Units. Use -UNITS to change to <2>.

Dave

[Anonymous]

Dave Stoll, I already tried setting the units to decimal and I tried all of the solutions mentioned above. Nobody seems to notice that the problem comes out when I start annotating the lines. That's when I noticed that the measurements are totally different when I use the line command compared to the polyline command. I thought that no matter which command I use, the measurements should be the same. Please see the last drawing that I posted.

[Pointdump]

J,

I changed -UNITS to <2> and used Line by Bearing to draw a line 10 units long. When I dimensioned it I got same as you, 10 inches. Ditto for drawing a Polyline. So I'm baffled and not sure what's happening.

Dave

[Jeff_M]

Your Dimension style units are set to architectural....

[Pointdump]

J,

"...the line command compared to the polyline command. I thought that no matter which command I use, the measurements should be the same."

I get same length lines both ways. (And yes, I'm using the drawing you posted.) I can't duplicate the difference you get between Line by Bearing and Polyline.

Something is definitely hinky. I've used Architectural Dimensions in Decimal drawings LOTS of times and never had a problem:

Dave

[AllenJessup]

OK. Lets start over and review how AutoCAD (and C3D built on AutoCAD) handles distance. AutoCAD is a totally unitless software. There is no basic unit which all others are based on. It us up to the user to decide what a measurement means. Probably the worst decision the original developers of AutoCAD made were how to handle inch based units. Instead of having 1 drawing unit equal to 1 foot they made 12 drawing units equal to 1 foot. It's been causing havoc ever since.

How the drawing units are reported depends on what UNITS are set in the drawing and how styles are defined. In the Civil 3D vertical it also depends on a large number of settings. If you needed to check and change every setting and style it could takes weeks. I know. I've done it and never want to do it again.

My suggestion would be to  start a new drawing from a template based on an OOTB Imperial template. If you don't have one use an actual Out of the Box template. If you're still having trouble after that you'll know that the trouble lies in Dimension and Label Styles. You might have to recreate some of the styles.

[AllenJessup]

Here's another problem with the drawing setup.

There are probably others. Again. I think it's best to start fresh rather than go through ALL the setting and ALL the Styles.

[tcorey]

@Anonymous hit the nail on the head. See post 15 of this thread. It's not your line that's messed up, it's your dimension style.

If you want to be able to dimension in architectural units while using Civil 3D, add a scale factor to your Dimension Style. On the Primary Units tab, set the scale factor to 12.