Drawing in metric.

[EMS_0525]

Hello everyone, First post here.

 

My company is in PA, and we deal with alot of overseas/ metric drawings. What is the best way to do a paperspace/ model space drawing? Have the title block at a metric size (mm) say 594x841 and then the scales in the viewport toolbar pull down will work correctly. They want to keep our standard sheet size of 20.75"x 30.75" to do metric drawings and just make the viewports what ever scale they need to be so it looks correct. Anyone framiliar with drawing in metric? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[dbroada]

I would say the best way is to go fully metric, using the A series of paper and draw in metric. However if you have to use an imperial sheet I would be inclined to go for an odd viewport scale.

 

Once you set your paper to be imperial, any scale will be odd anyway because of the 25.4:1 inherant difference.

 

We have a number of projects for the US which are plotted on imperial paper and have a NTS viewport (we draw metric).

[EMS_0525]

could someone that uses metric confirm sheet sizes for me

 

A Series Formats

A0 841 × 1189

A1 594 × 841

A2 420 × 594

A3 297 × 420

A4 210 × 297

A5 148 × 210

A6 105 × 148

A7 74 × 105

 

Are these standard sheets? You would be surprised how hard it is to find free metric standards online.

[eldon]

Those look pretty good. You only have to type A0 size into Google and there is all the information.

[dbroada]

in case you're interested, the area of an A0 sheet is 1 sq m and each size is half the size of its bigger brother. So 3 * A1 = A0. The aspect ration is constant.

[EMS_0525]

to make things easier for us, i think we are just going to scale our imperial title blocks and borders up 25.4 so its close to a metric scale, that way the viewport scales will work at say 1:40,1:50 and so on...

[dbroada]

it is probably easier that way as one of our problems using imperial borders is that the aspect ratio of the border doesn't match the paper in the plotter so we have a lot of white space. I assume your plotter is geared towards imperial shapes, not metric.

[EMS_0525]

Yes... One of the other main problems is that I am one of the newest employees at my company, and there are mostly guys here that have been here so long they started hand drafting and got thrown into CAD, and the way they are used to doing things is scaling everything down to fit in the border, which is also in model space. So we have metric drawings scaled down to fit in a 21"x 32" border.... Makes for a pain when you need to edit the drawing. So im trying to get them to understand borders go in paperspace and viewports and such. Now this whole metric issue. Then it comes down to there being many ways to do the same thing in cad, and that a different way isnt wrong, its just different. I told my boss that we should have metric title blocks/borders, to make this process easier. The other problem is that no one around here really knows how to use cad. They use it like they are still drawing by hand.

[dbroada]

HEY, I'm in that category!

 

We don't (usually) use paper space but even so, the golden rule remains - DRAW YOUR DETAILS AT 1:1. You can then scale the border around the detail to fit.

 

Can you introduce that concept? Drawing at 1:1 is so much easier than drawing to scale - even for us oldies.

[EMS_0525]

Ha, sorry. Im only 25 so i have been on computers my whole life. Did some hand drafting in high school. But thats old outdated technology.

I think i have the one guy im working closely with drawing at 1:1, Title blocks/borders should be in paperspace, and use view ports to get the drawing to scale, that way the title block never changes. My company needs a CAD Standards Manager.

 

Thanks for the help.