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How do you convert a drawing from metric to feet?


Jrose

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The short answer is - it depends.

 

Check Format - Units Your drawing is probably currently set for decimal, change it to Architectural, and make sure that you change your dimstyles as well.

 

BUT. Depending on what 1 unit in your metric drawing was defined as you may need to scale the drawing. If 1 unit was 1mm you need to scale differently than if 1 unit was used for 1 meter or kilometer or ...

 

Glen

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although that thread is about alternate imperial units not changing from metric to imperial.

 

The main point is you have to determine what you want to do. As already stated ALWAYS draw at 1:1. You need to scale everything to make the systems match up.

 

If I gave you a drawing of a box, it would be (say) 100 x 300 x 50. If you measured it you would say it is 4" x 12" x 2". So you need to scale my entire drawing down by the correct amount, which should be 1:25,4 or 1"=25,4mm.

 

You will need to scale by 1/12 to get from inches into feet or follow the other thread.

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What I will do is:

 

Copy entire dwg (metric) into imperial template (New-Imperial)

scale entire dwg:

 

Command: scale

Select objects:all

Specify base point:

Specify scale factor or [Reference]: 0.03937007874016

 

Change current dim style from usually ISO to Standard

Update dimension

Check dwg for any inconsistency

 

... anything I miss?

Hope not. That it.

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That would imply that your current metric drawing is in cm units. If so then it looks like that should work.

 

I like to draw an object (rectangle or some such) of a known size that I can visually compare to the converted drawing. just to be sure I did the math right. I also often use the DISTance command to be sure what AutoCAD thinks the size of my object is.

 

Glen

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That would imply that your current metric drawing is in cm units.

 

Glen

 

I think smallest unit in metric is mm and inch in imperial so AutoCAD converting with this scale from inch to mm and vice versa

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BAH, you are right, that scale factor goes from mm to inches. This is why I use known objects and the distance command to double check my math.

 

I was thinking cm to feet (since you asked about converting to feet) which would be 1/30.48

 

sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

 

Glen

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  • 7 years later...

I know that this is an old thread but it would be more precise if you just used 10/254 instead of "0.03937007874016". Doing it this way you don't have to mess with the decimal places. Anyway, I thought I would share.

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Very true. For whatever reason, sometimes I get drawings that have items drawn Imperial and metric all in one drawing so I always need to scale just the part that's in metric to imperial so I use the 10/254 which serves my ok. Many ways to skin the cat as always.

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