How do I change the units in my drawing?

Anonymous · ‎11-10-2014

I have a simple model I made with mm units in Fusion 360. It's an 80 mm long and 18mm in diameter. The units in my design are mm. When I create a drawing it appears it want's to use inches and there is no way to change it (severely limiting it's usefullness). The setting appears in the dialog but is greyed out and not changable.

Why would:

1) It choose to do the drawing in inches when my design units are in mm

2) Not allow me to change the annotation style

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brothertheo · ‎09-26-2018

I sometimes work on things that need both metric and SAE units - its kind of a pain really. But, while I wish Fusion would allow me to specify/display both units when drawing and laying out parts, you can actually explicitly specify both within a drawing.

I default to SAE/imperial measurements, but when I have to put an object or draw a line that has metric measurements, I can enter mm, cm, m, etc into the box and it will automatically convert to the imperial measurement. When you hover over the measurement, or double click to edit, it will show the original number with metric units.

In the drawing below, I drew a line and entered 2.54 cm in the box, and it automatically set it to the right size, but displays on the screen as 1.00 inches. If I hover over it or edit the dimension, it shows the original 2.54 cm specified.

cmiller66 · ‎09-26-2018

Hi brothertheo,

While you're in the Model environment (as shown in your screen capture) you can switch between units by expanding Document Settings in the browser and change active units to inch/mm as desired. The units in a 2D drawing though are set at time of creation and can't be changed once the drawing is created.

Thanks,

Chris

dennyreedjr · ‎01-10-2019

Why is there no option to select feet and inches? Kind of ridiculous if you ask me. I agree this should be changeable just like in the modeling environment, however, feet and inches needs to be an option as well.

TimeraAutodesk · ‎01-11-2019

@dennyreedjr, feet and inches support is an item on our long-term roadmap. Can I ask what type of work you're doing with Fusion 360 where you need feet units? Woodworking, maybe?

dennyreedjr · ‎01-11-2019

I often model up kitchen cabinets in fusion 360

Anonymous · ‎02-08-2019

It's been 6 years and you still don't support changing units for existing drawings? WHY

chrisplyler · ‎02-09-2019

@TimeraAutodesk wrote:

@dennyreedjr, feet and inches support is an item on our long-term roadmap. Can I ask what type of work you're doing with Fusion 360 where you need feet units? Woodworking, maybe?

Maybe person A will never want feet-inches. Maybe person B will. Just what their brain is used to? Office standards? What difference does the WHY make? Generalized CAD software should include all the major standards of unit expression. It just should. One would think a company like Autodesk would employ people who get that.

jgugg · ‎02-25-2019

Just to add my vote to increasing the priority for adding this as a feature and to echo what's been said here (excepting the descent into acrimony), being able to change drawing units on the fly would be helpful to me, and I imagine lots of other fusion360 users. I work with customers in the US who are used to seeing English units, and fabricators in Asia, who work in metric. I currently either a) produce 2 separate drawings or b) click through every dimension and add alternate dimensions (laborious). Seems like their should be an easier way than clicking through hundreds of dimensions, clicking alternate, adjusting precision, etc.

A few options would work, any of them would be a vast improvement:

1) a dropdown in the drawing that would switch units.

2) the ability to always show both primary and alternate, with the ability to set/save precision for alternate

3) a convert feature, letting you save the drawing to a new drawing with the other type of units.

Probably lots of other options that would work too.

Just my $.02, I realize there are lots of features competing for resources, but this one has been out there for a while and it seems like a good number of people would appreciate it.

Anonymous · ‎06-13-2019

I'm going to have to cast my vote too. It's 2019 (I learned cad via AutoCAD 9...) why did I have to spend a full day trying to find out how to do this just to find a form post for 6 years ago that still has not been updated with "WE NOW HAVE THE ABILITY!!!"...

This is just sad.

justinWP97Q · ‎07-04-2019

Hi Guys,

I'm honestly astonished to see Autodesk's position here. I've worked in industry for 10 years and I've used several CAD platforms including Solidworks, CATIA, NX, Pro-E, etc. All of the other CAD softwares support this feature. The fact that we simply cannot change an existing drawing from inches to mm and back and forth is incredibly frustrating. It shows a deep lack of understanding of how design and manufacturing work in the real world.

On several projects, we send out 2D drawings in mm and inches to diversify our quoting and supply management process. Having to make a brand new drawing just to switch units is not only a huge waste of time, but it makes for an opportunity to make more human errors whether it is a drawing missing information or inconsistent information between supposedly equivalent parts.

On top of that, I went to create a drawing today with my standard ASME B size format that I have saved. As it turns out, I have to create a whole new drawing format to create a drawing in mm. Once again, huge waste of time. My current workaround is to avoid doing ANY drawings in Fusion, export the STEP files and do the drawing in another CAD program, not named Fusion 360.

The 2D drawing features and support in Fusion 360 are so bad that I'm not sure that Autodesk can call this a full CAD solution. Whether it is no support for weld symbols, or the inability to make simples changes in units, Fusion 360 has a long ways to go. And here you guys are, adding things like generative design into the features. Yeah, that's nice and sounds good on a marketing white-paper, but how about THE BASICS?!? The original post for this issue was 6 years ago. So at this rate, I would imagine it will never change...

kevin6D8SH · ‎08-01-2019

Actually his frustration is valid and understandable. This thread was started 5 years ago. Something as simple as changing units in a drawings was not added to the programming features. This is inexcusable. Just like not adding welding symbols. I would put this program up there with Google Sketch-up tbh. Not powerful enough for any type of reputable mechanical design.

Anonymous · ‎10-30-2019

Is this still the case.. 5 years on?

I don't want to change my default units for all future drawings, but just need to produce one drawing at a different scale. Is there still no way to change units after the fact? Thanks!

Anonymous · ‎12-15-2019

It has been 6 years! HOW IS THIS STILL NOT FIXED! When looking at the software, I was to that there are over 700 software engineers at AutoCAD! This is a ridiculous negligence of listening to customers. This is telling me to stick with our mix of Solidworks and MasterCAM!

TimeraAutodesk · ‎12-16-2019

Hi @Anonymous ,

We do have this on our roadmap to tackle in 2020, but in the meantime using alternate units are going to be your best bet.

Thanks for your patience!

TimeraAutodesk · ‎12-16-2019

Hi @Anonymous , as I indicated in my direct email to you, this is on our roadmap for 2020. Fusion 360 is in fact a big product with many developers, but the Drawings team specifically has been small the last couple of years. We are re-funding that team so that we can accelerate feature delivery this upcoming year to help close the array of functionality gaps that we know exist based on customer feedback like yours. We are listening.

Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

marshscholz · ‎01-31-2020

another ping for adding this feature. this should not be a hard feature to add. everything should really be unit agnostic with a default unit setting and specified one. it should have been programmed to be instantly switchable from the get go. 5+ years on from the start of this thread, which once realized should have been a "i cant believe we forgot about that" feature and it still doesn't exist is bonkers.

jgugg · ‎01-31-2020

I'm going to add an update to my post - you can display two different units
in drawing now, by double clicking on the dimension, and in the dimension
box that appears, checking alternate units. A little cumbersome to have to
do this for each dimension, but works pretty well for me.

TimeraAutodesk · ‎01-31-2020

Hi @marshscholz , thanks for bringing this back up. I assure you we have not forgotten about this, and I'm happy to report that this feature is in development. Keep an eye on our public Roadmap to see details and keep an eye on what the team's working on.

jgugg · ‎01-31-2020

UPDATE

Discovered this not too long ago, not sure if it was always there or is a recent upgrade, but thanks either way.