Converting Drawing Units within a Drawing File

The DrawingUnits command lets you convert the unit of measurement used in the current drawing to other drawing units available in the application.

For example, use DrawingUnits when you have a drawing created in Imperial Units that uses Inches and you need to convert it into Millimeters.

During the command workflow, you can specify the drawing units to convert to, the linear display format and precision. If necessary, you can scale the entities in the current drawing to reflect the change in the drawing units.

Additionally, you can match the INSUNITS system variable to the new drawing units.

Note: The INSUNITS system variable stores the units used in the drawing.

To convert drawing units within a drawing file:

1. Type DrawingUnits at the command prompt.
2. Specify an option:
   • Inches
   • Feet
   • Millimeters
   • Centimeters
   • Decimeters
   • Meters
3. Specify the linear display format:
   • Scientific
   • Decimal

   If you specify Inches, the following additional options are available:

   • Engineering
   • Architectural
   • Fractional

   Note: Changing the linear display format also updates the LUNITS system variable for the current drawing.

4. Specify the linear display precision:
   • For the Scientific and Decimal options of Feet, Millimeters, Centimeter, Decimeters, and Meters options, set the precision for linear units from 0 to 8 decimal places.

     Note: Changing the linear display precision also updates the LUPREC system variable for the current drawing.

   • For the Architectural and Fractional options of Inches, specify the smallest fraction denominator: 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256.
5. Specify whether to match the INSUNITS system variable to the conversion unit.

   To specify whether you want to match the conversion unit to the INSUNITS system variable, type Yes or No. Press Enter.

6. To specify whether to scale entities and dimensions in the current drawing to reflect the change in units, type Yes or No. Press Enter.

   This also scales entities in hidden, locked, and frozen layers, as well as blocks and nested blocks.

   Note: Dimension styles also change accordingly when scaling entities and dimensions.

7. To specify whether to include the entities in the paper space, type Yes or No. Press Enter.

   Note: Entities in the paper space are only scaled when converting from Imperial to Metric units or from Metric to Imperial units.

Access

Command: DrawingUnits