Smart Client

Converting Drawings between Metric and Imperial Projects

When converting drawings between projects of different measurement systems, you must be aware of two settings:

• The project's Base Units

  Base Units are area/length units that are specified per project in the Archibus Schema Preferences table. Area/length field values are always stored in the database in the Base Units. A project's Base Units setting can be either Imperial or Metric. If you are using Imperial units, all areas for the project are stored in square feet. If using Metric units, all areas for the project are stored in square meters. If you change a project’s Base Units after cataloging drawings, you must recatalog the drawings.

• Each drawing’s units

  When you use Overlay to create a new drawing, you specify the Units for the drawing as Imperial or Metric. A drawing’s units can be either feet, millimeters, centimeters, or meters. A drawing’s units are independent of the project's Base Units, so that drawings with different units can exist in the same project. For example, if you have a drawing with units of feet and a project with Metric units, then the drawings’ areas will always be stored in square meters (the project’s units), providing you have not changed the units settings after developing area items. To change your settings for existing drawings, follow the steps outlined below.

Procedure

1. Decide whether the project’s areas should be reported in square feet or square meters and to set the Base Units of the Archibus Schema Preferences table to Metric or Imperial.

   If you wish to have square feet (even though your drawings may be drawn in centimeters), set your project’s Units setting to Imperial. If you wish to have square meters, set your project’s units to Metric.

   Note: You can have some drawings drawn with a base unit of inches, others drawn with a base unit of meters, and still others drawn with a base unit of centimeters all in the same project. However, Archibus will always store your areas in either square feet or square meters, depending on the project’s Base Unit setting. If you do change a drawing’s units after you have already cataloged its areas, you must scale the drawing accordingly and recatalog the assets. If you change the project’s Units setting while the project is open, you must re-open the project to have the setting take effect.

2. Scale any drawings whose units are changing. Use the table at the end of this topic to determine the scale factor to use.

3. To change the drawings' Unit:

   From the Smart Client, select the Views tab and locate the Archibus Drawings table in the list.

   Click Add so that the records for the Archibus Drawings table are shown in the right panel.

   Click the View/ Fields command to show the available and visible fields for the Archibus Drawings table.

   Click and drag the Units and Base Metric Units fields from the Available Fields panel to the Visible Fields panel and click OK. The view in the right panel of the Archibus Drawings table now shows the Base Metric Units and Units for each drawing in the database. For a drawing that has "Metric" for its Units field, the Base Metric Units determines whether the drawing uses centimeters, millimeters, or meters.

   Change the drawing's Units and Base Metric Units settings according to the base units used in the drawings themselves

   For example, if a drawing is drawn in feet, set the Units field to Imperial; the Base Metric field has no effect. If a drawing is drawn in meters, Units should be Metric and Base Metric Units should be Meters.

4. In the Archibus Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD, recatalog all drawings whose units have changed by running the Catalog command.

Conversion Table

Use the following table to determine the appropriate scale factor.

Current Base Unit	Desired Base Unit	Scale Factor
inches	millimeters	25.4
inches	centimeters	2.54
inches	meters	.0254
millimeters	centimeters	.1
millimeters	meters	.001
millimeters	inches	.03937
centimeters	millimeters	10
centimeters	meters	.01
centimeters	inches	.3937
meters	millimeters	1000
meters	centimeters	100
meters	inches	39.37