originally a 10-inch line is now 10 miles; no
attempt is made to scale the drawing from the
original base unit to the new one.
Default Units for New Drawings: The default
base unit that will be used for any new drawings
you create.
Default Units for Opening Unitless Drawings:
Affects the way unitless symbols and blocks are
imported into the drawing. When loading a
unitless symbol or block, the imported object's
base units are assumed to be the same as those
specified by this setting.
If a unit-based symbol or block is loaded or
merged into a unit-based drawings, the symbol's
or block's base units are converted to those of the
host unit, so that the symbol is imported at the
correct "real-world" size. When loading a
unit-based symbol or block into a unitless
drawing, the symbol or block is also assumed to
be unitless (for example, a distance of 10 base
units in the symbol becomes a distance of 10 in
the unitless drawing).
When entering a distance in an edit box, such as
the DX, DY, or DZ fields in Point Relative, a
plain decimal number is assumed to be in the
current units of measurement. If a value is entered
in feet-and-inches format, such as 3' 2", then that
distance is converted to the current base unit of
measurement. If the current base unit is inches,
for example, an entry of 3' 2" becomes 38 inches;
if the current base unit is meters, the entry is
converted to 0.9652 meters. If the drawing is
unitless, the base unit is implicitly treated as feet
anytime a feet-and-inches distance entry is
specified (in other words, the example distance
entry of 3' 2" is converted to 3.166666667 units.)
Dimension commands (see “Dimensions”
on page 157) will normally dimension in the
current base unit, so long as a decimal or
fractional text format is chosen for the dimension
command. However, if a Feet-and-Inches text
format is chosen, then the displayed distance will
be converted from the current base unit to feet and
inches. If a Feet-and-Inches dimension text
format is chosen in a unitless drawing, the
distance is calculated as though the base unit were
feet.
Drawing to Scale
When you draw to scale in DesignCAD, you are
usually measuring the objects in a given base unit
of measure. DesignCAD doesn't care whether
your base unit is meters or miles or even leagues.
What's important is that you use the same base
unit throughout the drawing.
Let's say that you're drawing a house and the front
wall is 32 feet long. To DesignCAD, it is 32
Drawing Units. You can draw a line by choosing
the Line command, setting the first point (click
the mouse or press Ins), then specifying that the
next point is 32 Units away.
But what if the next item you measure in the same
drawing is 10 centimeters tall? If you draw it at a
height of 10 units, it will be much too large. Why?
Because centimeters and feet are different units.
In this example, you would need to convert the
centimeters to feet, and then tell DesignCAD the
size of the item in feet.
The key point is not to mix units. If feet are
convenient, call out all distances in the drawing in
feet. If centimeters are convenient, measure
everything in centimeters. As long as you're
consistent, all is well. If you use feet, many of the