Units in DraftSight:

It is important to know how to change units in DraftSight.

In this post, we will look at the various options the software has for Unit conversions.

Entities in DraftSight are considered unitless hence unit of a drawing has no effect on the measured numerical values in that drawing.

In this post, we will consider different options to change unit System in DraftSight.

Let’s first check Dimension formats present in DraftSight:

• Linear Dimensions:

1. Decimal Units: It is a dimension format which is considered unitless hence if we place dimension with say value 100 it can be considered as 100 mm or 100 inches or in any other unit. However, if you want to consider the drawing in some specific unit format, we can change the way how dimensions appear.
2. Architectural Units: It represents units in Feet/Inches in Fractional and decimal format with Feet (‘) or Inches (“) symbol.
3. Engineering Units: It represents units in Feet/Inches. If we change format from decimal to say engineering it shows 100units dimension value as 8'4000". Each engineering unit is equivalent to one inch in denoted by ‘and”.
4. Fractional Units: It is unitless and represents unit in Fractions. The unit of measurement can be represented using fractions.
5. Scientific Units: A measurement yields 1.2000E+01 when the length of 100 units is included. Using scientific notation is mainly beneficial when dealing with extremely large numbers.
6. Windows Desktop: It represents units same as that in Decimal Format.

• Angular Dimensions:

1. Decimal Degrees: It is a default format measure angles and display them as Real numbers denoted by ‘°’.
2. Deg/Min/Sec: The format of degrees, minutes, and seconds.
3. Grads: Unit format measured in Trigonometry defined as one-hundredth of the right angle. It is denoted by ‘g’
4. Radians:  Radian is the angle subtended at the center of a circle by an arc that is equal in length to the radius denoted by ‘r’.

How to change Unit System in DraftSight:

There are following ways present in DraftSight to Change units in DraftSight:

• Using Drafting Styles: 

This changes Dimension appearance visually in different unit formats. However, it does not change value of the Dimension.

• Steps to change these Linear unit Dimension Formats in DraftSight:

1. Go to Tools>Options>Drafting styles> Dimension>Linear Dimension
2. Change the format as per your requirement.
3. Click 'OK'

Following images explain different dimension formats in detail:

Decimal Format: 

 Architectural Format:

• Steps to change these Angular unit Dimension Formats in DraftSight:

1. Go to Tools>Options>Drafting styles> Dimension>Angular Dimension> Angular Dimension
2. Change the format as per your requirement
3. Click 'OK'

          Following images explain different angular dimension formats in detail: 

  Decimal Format:

  Grads Format:

• Using the UN Command: 

This command lets you change Format and Accuracy of the dimension units.

1. Type UN (UNITSYSTEM) command and press ‘Enter’.
2. In Unit System Dialogue Box, select required option for Type and precision. (Default Format is set to ‘Decimal’ and Unit Scale to ‘Inches’
3. Click ‘OK’.

         Options-Drawing Settings Dialogue Box in DraftSight:

Changing Unit System changes the format, precision, and other settings used to display coordinates, distances, and angles in specific dwg file.

To check the changes in Unit System, follow below steps:

1. Type command ‘_GETDISTANCE’ or go to Manage> Inquiry
2. Select start and end point.
3. Check the dimension in command window and in Property Panel

You will notice dimension format is updated as per the setting selected in Unit System dialog box. 

           Check below image visual reference:

• By Changing the Scale Factor of Linear Dimension:

In DraftSight it is not possible to change drawing units from one unit to other say from Metric to Imperial. 

Workaround to change dimension values to desired units is as below:

Let’s convert drawing from Inches to millimeter units.

1. Go to Tools>Options>Drafting styles>Dimension>Linear Dimension
2. For Format set 'Decimal'.
3. Scale as 25.4
4. Click 'OK'.

This will change the values of the dimensions from ‘inches’ to ‘mm’. 

These settings are set at drawing level inside a dimension style. To apply same dimension settings to multiple drawings, create template with specific dimension style and use it while creating new drawing files as below:

1. Go to Tools > Options > System Options > Open / Save As > Template file name for SmartNew. 
2. Click Browse to set template file with required settings 
3. Click ‘OK’.