How do I change the units in my drawing?

[Anonymous]

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

[cmiller66]

Hi Michael,

We do not currently support changing units for existing drawings, units need to be specified before the drawing is created.  To do this:

1.  Expand the user (your username) menu in the upper right corner

2.  Preferences > Drawing

These settings will be applied for all new drawings created from this point on.  The Document Settings dialog (File > Document Settings) contains a subset of the Preferences settings and these can be changed for the current active drawing.

Thanks,
Chris

[Anonymous]

I think it's broken.  I can change it in my global preferences and creating a new document will work.  However I am unable to change it in each document or to modify it for an existing document.  There might be pages for some designs where some parts are metric and some are imperial.

Look at the screen shot the "File > Document Settings" dialog box has these fields greyed out and will not let me change the value...looks like it's there, just not working properly.  I should't need to modify a global preference to create one sheet that has different units.

[cmiller66 · Accepted solution]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the details, this isn't broken, what you're seeing is the current supported behavior - currently you cannot change units for a drawing once it is created.  I will forward your request our designers.

Thanks,
Chris 

[Anonymous]

Is this still the case two years on?
Drawing units cannot be changed after drawing creation?

[scott.price]

Hi @Anonymous -

Units along with certain other settings are set at drawing creation currently. Could you tell me a bit about what you're trying to do?

Thanks,

Scott

[Anonymous]

I have a drawing which I have dimensioned in inches and I want to change
it to mm.
Is this possible?

[cmiller66]

Hi Alan,

Currently you cannot change the units in an existing drawing.  You'd need to start a new drawing for just mm dimensions.  One option which is supported is Alternate Units, if you double-click a dimension you can check Alternate Units in the dimension properties dialog to append the mm value to the inch dimension.  Will that work for you?  

Thanks,

Chris

[reiner]

Hi Chris,

is there an option to at least show values in both units (or in the other) in the "Measure" window? That way it would be at least possible to collect some measurements and then use them in a different drawing.
I have gotten a bunch of drawings in Inches and need to create add-on parts in mm.

Thanks,
Reiner

[cmiller66]

Hi Reiner,

If you're in the model you can toggle the units in the browser, then measure will reflect those units.  Once the drawing is set up with inch or mm units, that can't be changed, but if you double-click a dimension in the drawing you can check "Alternate Units" to display both values.  Does that help?

Thanks,
Chris

[reiner]

Yes, that works. Thanks for the quick answer! It is at least a good workaround for my problem. The drawings I got have the unit set to inches but actually use millimeters so I see a lot of "strange" values in inches while the millimeter values are nice values like 20mm.

I hope that we will eventually get a way to change such drawings completely - or why not just drop the support for the Imperial units completely 😉

[Anonymous]

The way to set the units before starting a new project in autodesk Fusion 360 is to go the Username (upper right corner) --> Preferences --> Default Units

AutoCAD Mechanical allows you to toggle between whatever units you want to change.

[Anonymous]

Again, to repeat the question: Is changing the units of an existing drawing now supported?

I would like to take an existing drawing and change the units from metric to imperial to aid manufacturing.

[cmiller66 · Accepted solution]

Hi CalebRho,

Changing units in an existing drawing is not supported.  On a per-dimension basis you can add alternate units by double-clicking the dimension and checking this.

Thanks,
Chris

[chris]

I have a question.  Why would you not have a way to convert a drawing from MM to inches or vise versa?  I figured since others have asked many years ago this is something you would have added.  What is the reasoning for not adding this feature?  It seems it could be a simple dropdown menu that states MM-Inches or Inches to MM.   There seems to be this feature in other types of CAD software so I am just curious why you have not included it in yours?

Thanks,

[chrisplyler]

Yeah. Like - you know - practically every other CAD software in existence.

[Anonymous]

You can change a MM drawing if you use the "New Drawing From Design".  You must first load a dummy component in the inch unit first.  I added a 2" circle first.  I then added a new component.  Then add your mm item as a "New Drawing from Design.  The drawing will then install as an inch drawing. 

[Anonymous]

None of these suggestions work.

There is no file > document settings.  Anywhere.

Changing units should not be like pulling teeth.  And I should not have to read 15 pages of forum comments to get this done.

Your software if a piece of garbage. Fusion 360, garbage.  The ONLY reason anyone uses it is because your free trial period.

It takes 10x longer to do anything in your software compared to Solidworks.

And why........................WHY is 'capture design history' not automatically turned on?  Oh wait, I have to drive somewhere, but wait, after I start my engine I have to remember to turn on my oil pump to keep my engine from blowing up.  Nope, the pump just comes on because that is logical.

Again, this and so many reasons, a garbage software.

I hope this was helpful to someone.  Use a different software.  I will.

[melvinbrian3d]

I do not understand what is the point of creating an account simply to put this type of comment, nobody is interested in your personal point of view, however your comment shows your level of education.

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