I get hung up on the smallest things.  I am attempting to copyclip my 1/4" architectural drawings (floor plan and elevations) to the survey I just received, which is in "decimal," according to the UNIT command.  When I attempt to draw the building envelop on the survey, some line lengths are in feet and inches (decimal point inches) and some lengths are in very large numbers that mean nothing to me.  I used a .2 scaling factor twice on the architectural drawings and they seem to be the right size, but when I try to measure a wall or roof length, the lengths again are meaningless; they also make no sense when I switch the survey UNITs to "engineering".  Perhaps more confounding is when I try to build a side section of the hillside lot using 1 foot "backbone" lines; when I put 12 into the command lines they are way too large, maybe by a factor of 10.  The command line won't accept 1'0.0 either.  What is the best way to attack these dimension/scaling issues so I have accurate dimension on the survey?  Can AutoCAD automatically convert?  Back to my "smallest" problem: how do I draw 12 inch parallel lines to build a section?  

Thanks in advance!