I reference in a 3D model of a substation in local coordinates (that was designed in autocad) in units of imperial feet, than I bring in a 3D mesh in the same local coordinates (imperial feet), and I notice they are not correctly lined up (they're very far away). However if you notice the scale on the properties bar it is a 0.0001 scale. To resolve this I changed the scale to 0.3048 (= 1/3.2808) this is how many meters in a foot and it all lines up correctly, can someone explain why this default scaling is happening?