Topic: Arch Dimensioning vs Engineering Dimensioning

[Gael]

Hello everyone,
I know this is a very old question but I just can't seem to find my answer.

I am a civil bridge drafter.  My drawings are in feet.  But when I get into the bridges, they like to label dimensions architectual style (7'-6").  When you set your units to do that of course it then changes your drawing so that everything is in inches.  That would be fine except that it makes my drawings noncompatible because there are off by a scale of 12.  Also making it hard to set my paper space scale since we use engineering scales and not architectual. 

Is there a way (with out hand typing every dimension) so that I can have my drawing in engineering units but it will label in an arch. style?

I feel like I want my cake and eat it too...but yeesh....

[Keith™]

linear scale the dimensions by 1/12 ..

Setup an arch style with the scale factor set to 1/12 and a civil style with the scale factor to 1

[Gael]

Thanks,
I will give it a shot!

[Keith™]

oops .. just realised my math was backward .. the arch style should be 12, not 1/12

[Shinyhead]

Eeeek, no no.

I am a stickler on that sort of thing though.  DO make a dimstyle for the bridge dims but don't scale factor the dims, set the units for that dimstyle to architectural and leave the rest as engineering.

[Keith™]

Eeeek, no no.

I am a stickler on that sort of thing though.  DO make a dimstyle for the bridge dims but don't scale factor the dims, set the units for that dimstyle to architectural and leave the rest as engineering.

Ok, explain how that will work .. since civil is generally 1:12 the size of a standard arch drawing. By setting the style to arch, you don't automagically get a dimension that is correct. The dimension is based upon the size of the object. If you draw in feet (i.e. 1 unit = 1 foot) then your arch dimensions will show the object as being 1" long instead of 12" long.

[Shinyhead]

Your right, forgot that civil is foot based not inch based.

Silly to think we could figure out a way to make things work together without having to scale dimensions, which makes me absolutely cringe.

[Keith™]

I know .. I cringe everytime I have to deal with a civil engineer on site plans ... We generally end up taking their plans and scaling them by 12 since we are the consumers of the drawing and they never make the round trip back to the civil folks.

[Dinosaur]

We did the same only scaled in the other direction.  Keith is going in the right direction for a solution but I think Shineyhead has the rest of the solution by setting the units in that style to architectural.  If the units are still decimal, the results will not be as expected or desired.

[Keith™]

I presumed that the arch dimstyle would naturally have the units set to architectural.

[Gael]

What drives me nuts is that if you are exploreing options, AutoCAD will change your drawing scale and you can not undo.
Because we do both bridge and civil we do both Arch and Eng and thats when it gets frustrating.  I came into a small group that hasn't had consistent drawing for a while and everytime I open an old project I have to figure out how the did the drawing.  For me, I think I am happy keeping everything in feet and having a Arch dim that scales for me. 

What is a pain is when you draw in feet but your Engineer gives you redlines in arch.  I am forever using my calculator to find the decimal.  Granted I could type longhand into the CAD but drives me nuts too. 

Ok, so everything is driving me nuts and there is no happy medium today...    =(  (But I have hope, it's friday and I am off in less than an hour)

thanks for your help and thoughts!