Datasheet

Setting Drawing Units
11
Setting Drawing Units
Before you start drawing, it’s important to decide what one drawing unit rep-
resents in the real world. Architects in the United States typically equate one
drawing unit with one inch in AutoCAD. You need to choose a unit type that
matches your country’s industry standard.
Architectural As the name suggests, most architects will choose this type,
which displays units in feet and inches. For example, 12 feet, 6
1
⁄2 inches is typed
as
12´6-1/2˝. The hyphen is used to separate inches from fractions of an inch
rather than feet from inches.
Decimal Metric users should select this type. One decimal unit can be equal to
one millimeter, one centimeter, or any metric unit.
Engineering Like the architectural type, engineering units feature feet and
inches, but the inches are represented in decimal form—for example, 12´6.500˝.
Fractional Woodworkers often prefer to set AutoCAD drawings in fractional
units of inches because that is how their work is normally reckoned. For example,
12 feet, 6
1
⁄2 inches reads 150-
1
⁄2˝ in fractional units.
Scientific For example, 12 million parsecs reads 12.000E+06 in scientific
units, where 12.000 indicates 12 accurate to a precision of three decimal places
and E+06 indicates the exponential function to the sixth power, or one million.
Let’s set AutoCAD’s drawing units:
1. Click the New button on the Quick Access toolbar. Click the arrow
button next to the Open button in the Select Template dialog box and
choose Open With No Template – Imperial (see Figure 1.16).
FIGURE 1.16 Opening a drawing with no template
Certification
Objective