Scale question

[PNWPaul]

Hi Guys, 

A quick question regarding scaling on sheets: I come from primarily using Civil 3d for my work, and in that software, if my drawing units are in decimal feet, the scale of 1:100 would be 1' = 100'. In Vectorworks, when I make a sheet layer, and my drawing units are in feet (even the rulers in the sheet layer are in feet), the scale is presented in inches, i.e. the Civil 3D scale of 1:100 would be 1:1200 in Vectorworks. Vectorworks puts in a scale annotation in the sheet, and I can remove this, but it would be nice to have if it gave the scale in a format that was commonly read and not in inches when the drawing units are in feet. 

Does anyone know of a way to change this?

I can select the scale 1" = 100', but that is as high as it goes, and the custom scale does not appear to allow me to create inch scales in the inch-to-foot format.

Thanks

[Jeff Prince]

AutoCAD/Civil 3D, if you are working in decimal, it doesn't know you are in feet, that's your assumption.  That's why your scale ratio is 1:100.

When you are in vectorworks, the software understands the units you are working it.  So, you can have a scale of 1"=100', but the unit factor will be 1:1200 in that case because of your mixed units.  If you want to have it read 1" : 100' or simply unitless as 1:100, you can do that by using "custom" and typing whatever you want.

 

AutoCAD's handling of units leaves a lot to be desired in real world applications.

Example: In AutoCAD if you receive a drawing from an architect that was done in architectural units, you have to scale your drawing geometry by a factor of 12 to convert to decimal feet.  Imagine the chaos when switching from metric architectural to US decimal feet.  These same exchanges done in Vectorworks would be seamless and not require any scaling, which is superior in my opinion.

 

Anyhow, you can make the scale read whatever you want.

This is important since Vectoroworks decided to depreciate the Parsec as one of the units available 🙂