Three of the most commonly asked questions are:

1. can I draw with imperial units?

2. can you set a scale at the start of a drawing?

3. how do you work with very large/small components?

The answer to these three questions is yes:

1. you can draw in feet and inches

2. you can set a scale at the start of a drawing

3. you can draw large/small components on an A3-sized sheet.

The most difficult concept for many CAD users is that all work should be completed full size.

In this chapter we will investigate three different types of exercise:

1. a component drawn and dimensioned in inches

2. a large-scale drawing

3. a small-scale drawing.

Each exercise will involve modifying the existing A3PAPER standard sheet.

Hopefully all users will appreciate what it means by drawing everything full size.

To draw with Imperial units we require a new standard sheet which could be created:

1. from scratch

2. using the Wizard facility

3. altering the existing A3PAPER standard sheet which is set to metric sizes.

We will alter our existing standard sheet.

The reason is that A3PAPER has already been 'customised' to our requirements (i.e. it has layers, a text style and a dimension style). This may save us some time?

The conversion from a metric standard sheet to one which will allow us to draw in inches is relatively straightforward. We have to alter several parameters (e.g. units, limits, drawing aids and the dimension style variables).

Open your A3PAPER standard sheet.

Units: Menu...