I reciently had a simular conversation with my neighbor who does structural engineering. First you need to understand AutoCAD does not see Inches, feet, meters or anything else in model space except UNITS. I know this is a bit confusing at first but, stick with me here. As a structural engineer or an Architech you would think of one unit as an inch. As a civil draftman I would think of one unit as a foot or when I am working in meteric, one unit is thought of as a meter. In reality the unit is still a unit. As the draftsman the unit conversion is all in your head. AutoCAD doesn't care what the units are asigned to and doesn't understand Inches or milimeters until it comes time to plot and you have to asign a ratio/scale to the plot. It is in plotting you assign the ratio of plotted Inches/millimeters to a drawing unit.
This is why I have to scale down an Architects drawing by 1/12 to understand the drawing in feet. I am thinking of 1 unit equalling 1 foot and the Architect thought of 1 unit equalling 1 Inch. In my DDUNITS I have is set to decimal where I believe you would have it set to Engineering or Architectual which translates the units inches. Engineering setting still reads everything as inches just like the Architectual units setting does. The difference between Architectual and Engineering is Architectual is read in fractions and Engineering is read in decimals of an Inch.
Civil engineers and Surveyors read everything in decimals of a Foot (i.e. tenths hundredths, thousandths) or decimals of a meter when working in meteric. They do not work in inches at all. This is why just setting the units Engineering does not work. Engineering units setting is still working in Inches and units are translated as inches not feet.
I hope that shed some light on the subject.
Jim
I was reading the question and answer that came from a civil drafter about getting drawings from and architect and having
trouble with the units. I have the same problem but in reverse. I do architectural and structural drafting and am wondering why civil draftsmen and engineers won't use the engineering units that come in AutoCad?
I find it as frustrating as I am sure civil drafters do. Is there some way that word
could be passed that AutoCad has this option inherent in the program?
Thanks for listening.
Dan Cole
Owner - Double Eagle Drafting
(Emailadie) [email protected]
