Allow a Default Scale List with Engineering Scales

[AllenJessup]

In Civil 3D if you open Options, go to the User Preferences tab and select Default Scale List. You only get a choice of Matric or Imperial. The Imperial choice only contains Architectural scales. So it's impossible to set Engineering Scales as the default. There are ways around that. But I think you should ask the AutoCAD Team to add Engineering as a choice. So you could choose Metric, Architectural or Engineeing scales as the default list.

[chriscowgill7373]

What further signifies it is not working like it should be, if you choose Metric and Imperial scales, it will give you Metric and Engineering. As opposed to choosing Imperial only, which gives you Architectural.

[Cadguru42]

I'm pretty sure I asked about this almost 20 years ago when I was using C3D 2006 or 2007. It's easy, low hanging fruit for Autodesk to do, yet they won't do it.

[BlackBox_]

This has always bothered me too... so years ago I made a command that cleans up & sorts scales in a drawing and I'm now making it automatic on drawing open. 

It accounts for existing entities and viewport annotation scales. 

While I cannot revise the native UI (obviously), besides wanting to set a default mode (Architectural, Engineering, Metric) and be able to easily define scales once (either external file like DWG, XML, or JSON, etc) or push them enterprise wide via GPO... what else would you want this to do? 

[AllenJessup]

@BlackBox_  Sound good to me. Hopefully others will chime in with something interesting.

[btillett]

The default scale list should also be configurable as a company standard. Scale names matter when working with annotative objects across XREFs. For example, 1"=50', 1" = 50', and 1=50 may represent the same scale ratio, but they are treated as different named scales.

Rather than introducing a fixed Engineering list that companies would need to reconcile with their existing drawings, why not provide a configurable path to a company scale-list file? That would let companies preserve their established scale names and include only the scales they use. For example, we do not use 1" = 70' and would not want it included in our default list.

[AllenJessup]

@btillett While a custom Scale list is possible by editing the Registry. A built in tool would be more convenient. 

[BlackBox_]

The tool I've developed does this - some may know that I'm also introducing batch processing of Reference Templates (TREFs) - so I'm exploring the idea of effectively making the TREF source (top source, if multiple) what defines the scales, then applying them to any existing annotative entities in kind. 

So, you have 100 existing projects that have different scale nomenclatures (1"=50', 1" = 50', 1=50, etc) but they all have the same defining ratio. The tool goes through and modifies all existing entities with a given scale to be your defined scale with the applicable ratio. If your scale list doesn't include some there may be residual so as to not break the sheet. 

5 years ago you implemented 1=50, but today that's 1" = 50'... simply open the old project drawing and it's updated automagically... every existing annotative entity, entire scale list cleaned up, just open and work (is the intent). 

A new custom sysvar will allow each company/user to enable/disable the automatic part, and a Command will work anytime, so everyone will have the granular control they want. 

[Edit] - forgot to add that we can also Veto() the native command that loads from Registry and instead invoke the custom Command, as another option to help all users be standardized. 

Cheers