Inches to Millimeters

[mlf]

We have been doing a job here for overseas. The project was started in imperial and the units were set to architectural inches. We now need to do this in metric. I change the units to decimal and millimeters. However, when I draw a line, it's still drawing in inches.

Im trying to draw a 50mm line but it's still coming out to 50".

Any idea?

Thanks
Mark

[cadtag]

It's coming out 50 units long -- whether you call that inches, millimeters, or furlongs is up to you. AutoCAD really just has a 'drawing unit' that can mean anything.

So... the question is, why do you think it's 50"? are you dimensioning the distance, or listing it?

[mlf]

It's coming out 50 units long -- whether you call that inches, millimeters, or furlongs is up to you. AutoCAD really just has a 'drawing unit' that can mean anything.

So... the question is, why do you think it's 50"? are you dimensioning the distance, or listing it?

Well i want to draw a line in paper space that would be 50mm. I start my pl and enter 50 and it's much longer than the paper. (24x36).

So im assuming it is 50". 50mm in paperspace would be about 2" give or take.

[tedg]

Well i want to draw a line in paper space that would be 50mm. I start my pl and enter 50 and it's much longer than the paper. (24x36).

So im assuming it is 50". 50mm in paperspace would be about 2" give or take.

If you need to draw in true metric, you will need to set up your files for metric.
An imperial titleblock set for 24"x36" needs to be 25.4 times bigger for metric.
Your layout will need to be set to milimeters and metric.

Look into the command "AECDWGSETUP" and try setting everything to milimeters and allow it to scale automatically, see if that fixes it.

[jaberwok]

Can you avoid the problem by not drawing lines in paperspace? Then all the scaling can be done through the viewports; it's not technically necessary that paperspace be in metric units..

[gfreddog]

Actually I have 2 Shortcuts on my desktop for just such occasions.
I have to occasionally generate drawings for use in the UK so we have to use that pesky Metric System

I have a shortcut for CAD MEP 2010 (Metric) with a target of:

"C:\Program Files\AutoCAD MEP 2010\acad.exe" /ld "C:\Program Files\AutoCAD MEP 2010\AecBase.dbx" /p "AutoCAD MEP (US Metric)"

Then I use open the drawing in the "Metric Set-up" and scale the Imperial items accordingly.

Seems to have worked for me so far.

Comments?

[artisteroi]

Ellen Finklestien shows how to write a simple lisp function that automatically converts your input into metric measurments. type in 1 inch cad will draw 2.54 cm. Or vice versa. It's pretty fool proof. I installed it on my pc 2 years ago. but only got to use it 3 times since then. try it out. takes about 20 minutes to set it up. never have to fight with conversion again.