Display Alternate Units

[kipper]

Hey NaeKid,

Could you expand a little more on:
Finally - if you are more concerned about having both metric and imperial showing on the drawing, go into the dimensions control panel (D<enter> from the command line) and turn on the "alternative units".

I want to show both feet and meters on some of my dimensions thanks.

[Bill Tillman]

Years ago I started working on projects that were in metric not Imperical like we use in the US. One of the things my co-workers would do was to try and convert the metric stuff to Imperical, which I saw as a complete waste of time. Let's face it. A line that is 4" long is also 101.6 mm long or XX^2 fingernail thicknesses, or 0.003 monkey tails long, or 0.234 banana lengths....

The point I made to them is it doesn't matter what units you're working in. A line that "is" this long, "is" always this long. To coin a phrase from Bill Clinton, "It all depends on what "is" means."

Units are units. Think of it in this realm and you'll begin to take more control of your drawings, and especially drawings created by others in different systems.

[Tankman]

An axe handle and two fists?

Yes, "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is."

[caddcop]

Watch out for US Survey Feet vs International Feet.

Many states us US Survey feet for their coordinates and converting between meters and the wrong feet can result in discrepancies of 3 or more feet.

On short distances, it is not significant, but when dealing with actual coordinate locations, which can be in the hundred thousands and millions, the 0.0000006 m difference can become significant.

[Tiger]

Hey NaeKid,

Could you expand a little more on:
Finally - if you are more concerned about having both metric and imperial showing on the drawing, go into the dimensions control panel (D<enter> from the command line) and turn on the "alternative units".

I want to show both feet and meters on some of my dimensions thanks.

What is it that is not working for you?

An alternative way of finding the dimension control panel is simply to hightlight the dimension in question and type PR that brings up the Properties window

[Cad64]

I want to show both feet and meters on some of my dimensions thanks.

Just open your dimension style manager, command DIMSTYLE, select your dimension style and click "Modify", go to the "Alternate Units" tab and check the "Display Alternate Units" box.

The Multiplier should default to 25.4 which will convert feet & inches to millimeters, but you can change that if you want the alternate units to display as centimeters or meters.

Place mm or cm or m in the Suffix box.

[9lg_skr420]

thats nice

[Efeezy]

nice nice learned something new in the newb section. thank you Cad64