The Drawing Units dialog box opens.Choosing Drawing Units from the AutoCAD Application Menu Select Units from the Application Menu > Drawing Utilities.To configure Insertion Units in your AutoCAD Drawing: Generally speaking, that means drawings whose Length Type is set to Architectural should have an Insertion Scale of Inches, and civil engineering drawings whose Length Type is set to Decimal should have an Insertion Scale of Feet (or US Survey Feet). I’ll break each of these down in a moment, but the rule of thumb is to set Insertion Units to whatever the units are in your drawing. Three variables control how Insertion Units behave, or misbehaves, in your drawing. When correctly configured, AutoCAD will automatically figure out the proper scale when going from inches to feet, Imperial to Metric, or just about anything in between. And that my friend is why we can now set an Insertion Scale in AutoCAD. Is your head hurting as you try to make sense of when to scale objects by a factor of 12, and when to scale objects by a factor of 1/12th? You’re not alone this is a concept that’s confused some of the savviest AutoCAD users I’ve known. A scale factor is necessary when these two worlds collide since one unit in architectural drawings equal one-inch, but equals one-foot in civil/survey drawings. Conversely, unscaled, an object measuring 2 decimal feet in a civil/survey drawing would measure just 2 inches in an architectural/MEP drawing – one-twelfth the intended size. Unscaled, an object measuring 2 feet, or 24 inches in an architectural or MEP drawing will measure 24 decimal feet in a civil or survey drawing – that’s twelve times the intended size. Though each is a form of Imperial measurements, a scale factor of 12 or 1/12th is necessary to exchange drawings inside or outside the building. At that stage of my career, I had not yet learned civil engineering drawings (in the US) are typically prepared in decimal feet whereby building plans are usually developed in inches. Using AutoCAD 2000, I remember struggling to figure out what scale to insert the first civil drawing I received into the MEP drawing I was working on. Veteran AutoCAD users likely recall a time when there was no such thing as Insertion Scale. Though it may seem like a curse, the good news is the counter-spell is an easy fix. Get it wrong, and you’re cursed with a riddle of why AutoCAD objects scale to seemingly random sizes when inserted into a drawing. Get it right, and the results are magical. The AutoCAD Insertion Scale is a mystical creature.

Autocad change to architectural units