A fellow employee and myself have had a disagreement, primarily about the setting of the Working Units in Microstation. He keeps his set at Feet / Inches, while I have set mine at Inches / Inches. Both of us work on basically the same type drawings, being surveys and roadwork that has been surveyed. Our work starts by data collection in the field and then the information is brought into AutoCAD/Eaglepoint and then referenced into Microstation. Being a long time user of AutoCAD, I know that survey data is collected in what I have always called "decimal feet," meaning that a road that would measure " 24' " wide in the field using a tape measure would simply measure " 24 " in AutoCAD when you units are set to "Decimal.". To get AutoCAD to measure this distance at " 24' " I would have to scale up the data by a factor of 12, which I never do because of wanting to keep the data as it was collected.
When I reference in the AutoCAD file to Microstation I receive the DWG/DXF Alert Box asking if I want to reference in at "Inches" or "Feet," and I always choose "inches" because I know that if I choose "feet" Microstation scales up the AutoCAD file x12, and even though my readout is in inches I assume decimal feet as in AutoCAD. My fellow employee never gets this message and so I believe that someone has placed a checkmark in the box beside the note that reads "Do not display again (Use this setting for all DWG/DXF files of this type)" in the DWG/DXF Alert Box, after having set the units to "feet," which means that every time he references a DWG file it scales it up x12.
Could someone simply shead some light on which of these methods is correct, or if there is a better way to do this? Also, I would like to know if there is a way of turning the DWG/DXF Alert Box back on, should it be that someone did check the box that I spoke of?
Thanks!
rayf1967
For most Civil Engineering work, Decimal feet is the preferred unit.But it gets even more complicated.
Most State DOT's use a unit called the US Survey Foot which is ever so slightly different from the foot (or international foot, as it is sometimes called.) For things like details and typical sections, the difference is inconsequential. But, if you get into state plane coordinates, it migrates will into the significant digits.
For example, in the State of Maryland, points ion the upper right corner of the state can be off by more than 5 feet if the wrong unit is used. And just to complicate things, there are a few locals that use the International Foot instead of the US Survey Foot.
This is all due to the fact that V8 added the ability to convert and keep track of units when referencing files of differing units.
Now, just because someone uses decimal feet, does not mean that they cannot still enter values as inches. MicroStation allows you to specify Feet and Inches (US Survey or International) as master units and sub units but still report decimal feet to measurement queries, because of the coordinate readout setting.
Most architectural users use inches in AutoCAD but seldom use State Plane coordinates. So in addition to occasionally having to scale things by 12, we also almost always have to move and rotate them into the proper location.
There is a file that is saved to a users personal workspace area that records that check box's setting. Some one else will have to elaborate as to where and what it is named, but deleting it will restore the dialog box.
All of our Land Desktop work is done using AutoCAD as decimal units and within LD, we set its settings to US Survey Feet. But we also needed to enable US Survey Feet in MicroStation and specify that unit when opening or referencing a DWG.
Charles (Chuck) Rheault CADD Manager
MDOT State Highway Administration
Thanks for the info. It seems to me, from looking at all of the info available in the Help file, and online, that Microstation comes standard, out of the box, with working units set to "Inches" and "Inches." That is one of the reasons I set my working units to that, along with the fact that I wanted to be able to measure the survey data accurately and without having to keep a calculator on hand.
Since we do transfter drawing information back and forth between AutoCAD, Eaglepoint, and Microstation, can you suggest the best settings, in your opinion, for the working units, and give me some examples of possible problems that could result from having them set otherwise? Since our D.O.T. has abandoned the Survey Feet route, it just seems best in my mind to leave the survey data "as is" by not scaling because of a possible problem that could happen going back and forth between the software.
You may want to check this DWG Units topic to get some ideas for how to best set your units for DWG.
HTH,
Don