scaling in Autocad

[mlstalter]

Hi All,
I just joined AUGI to hopefully get some much needed help. I'm new to AutoCAD but not CAD in general. I've worked as a CAD designer for going on 50 years now and most of my experience with Autodesk has been on Inventor (12 or so years). Prior to that I worked on Pro-E for about 18 years. Some of the systems I used in the early days don't even exist anymore. So here's the rub.....AutoCAD scaling is a real bear to grasp and quite different from the 3D solid modeling platforms. I'm looking for someone to either point me in the right direction (specifically scaling) with suggested reading or even better, work with me thru this forum to help me get the hang of it. I've read the help stuff, tried some things on my own, and am still struggling. I have examples of what I'm trying to do and just need an experienced user to interpret and explain the how's and why's of scaling. Thanks for your time in reading this post and hopefully lending a hand.

regards,

Mike Stalter
mlstalter

[Tom Beauford]

Options to scale objects include using the scale command, grips, Properties palette. Are you referring to scaling viewports?

[remi678731]

Hi I'll try to explain what was explained to me by a very good teacher. Autocad does everything in its unit. You can call this unit whatever you want inches, feet, miles, or metric. If you need to go from on to another you just need to make sure you have the right parameters in to scale properly

[dgorsman]

Scaling in AutoCAD is to change object size by a factor - it's not to do with units.

As mentioned by the other poster, AutoCAD is by default unitless in model space (unless you're working with fractional inches/feet-inches). One unit could be a meter, could be a millimeter, could be a kilometer. Draw your objects (2D or 3D) full size based on what units are appropriate i.e. don't draw bolts with 1.0 being 1 kilometer.

Paper space is always millimeters for metric drawings and inches for imperial drawings.

[vtmiii]

Scaling in autocad is actually simple. Model space is what I call real world and by using the ddunits command you can set the real world of autocad to behave in architecture, engineering, decimal or metric. switch to paper space and set the view ports to the scale that you need. (ex 1/8" = 1'-0" ) you would double click the viewport and by using the zoom command you set the scale by zoom and then use 1/96xp to set the proper scale or pick the scale from the toolbar or palate. I have made a toolbar that once the scale is determine, sets the Line type scale and font size when in model space and when you go back to paper space it will reset the scale to paper space. the only thing is if you do not use lisp to program autocad, you have to manually have to set some variables for each job. I have PSLTSCALE set to 1 and MSLTSCALE set to 0.