CAD Forum - tips, tricks, discussion and utilities for AutoCAD, Inventor and other Autodesk products [www.cadforum.cz]

CAD tip # 7103:

Question CAD
% platform category

How to convert a drawing from inches to centimeters (or vice versa)?

First of all - an AutoCAD drawing in the modelspace is unitless. A drawing unit can be anything you wish. A square of 10x10 units can be 10mm, 10m, 10", 10 feets, whatever. The real physical units are required only when you want to represent the drawing model for the real world - for dimensioning, plotting (plot scale), paperspace and annotation functions.

But if you really want to scale your drawing from inches to milimeters, centimeters, meters - or vice versa - e.g. from centimeters to inches (i.e. between metric and imperial units), you can use the SCALE command.

When going e.g. from inches to centimers, you have to scale up your drawing 2.54x. Run the SCALE command, select All objects, specify *0,0 (global) as the reference point and enter 2.54 as the scale factor.

You can prepare a menu macro button to perform this conversion operation automatically (menu macros use ";" instead of Enter) - some examples:

[Inches->CM]^C^C_SCALE;_All;;*0,0;2.54;
[Inches->MM]^C^C_SCALE;_All;;*0,0;25.4;
[CM->Inches]^C^C_SCALE;_All;;*0,0;0.3937;

In newer AutoCAD versions (2006 and up) you can simply set the correct units in FORMAT>UNITS>INSERTION SCALE in both drawings - when you then insert the xref/block, AutoCAD will scale it for you automatically - it is far less painless. (thanks kris.treagus)

ACADLT

* CAD

10.12.2009 41925x FAQ

Comments Tell a friend

applies to: AutoCAD · AutoCAD LT ·

See also:
Tip 9359:	Different types of rounding in Inventor parameters.
Tip 8896:	Choosing units - mm/inches - in Inventor.
Tip 8794:	Display CAD model in true size 1:1 on your monitor.
Tip 8365:	Inventor understands many different measurement units.
Tip 1907:	How to influence scale of blocks dragged from DesignCenter?

Selected tip: 'Error: malformed list on input' when loading a LSP file

Back All CAD Tips

Switch AutoCAD to TURBO mode. « | » Render error: The following render appearance images are missing

Have we helped you? If you want to support the CAD Forum web service, consider buying one of our CAD applications, or our custom software development offerings, or donating via PayPal (see above). You may also add a link to your web - like this "fan" link:

CAD: OS: Categ:
Text:	FAQ glossary

Featuring:
Publish interactive 3D PDF models from AutoCAD, Inventor or Revit with Share3D More info

Please use these tips at your own risk.
CAD Studio (Xanadu) is not responsible for possible problems that may occur as a result of using any of these tips.


Login/Register:
Visitors: 1735