Help! How Do I Combine Inches And Meters In The Same Plan?


dr0591
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Hi Chief friends,

 

I'm in a quandary.  I have a very extensive 10,000 sf plan drawn up for a client in Canada.  The plan dimensions that I worked from to draw the house are in inches, so that's what I used.  But now I've received the site plan to add the terrain, and all the elevation points are in meters.  Can someone advise on how to combine these two to be able to get accurate terrain?  Can I somehow convert the plan default dimensions to meters, but have the house retain its correct size?  Any advice on how to deal with this would be appreciated!

 

Kathleen

 

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ask the surveyor to provide the Data in Decimal Feet , which is what Chief and probably the Builder will use anyway....

 

or perhaps do a separate Site(terrain) Plan in meters and copy and paste the house outline into it

 

you can use the secondary format in your dimensions to show meters as well as feet if needed too

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The surveys here are always in metric. Almost all our residential construction is in feet and inches. Canadian, eh!

In Vectorworks you just put in the numbers (ie: 6m) and it converts to feet and inches. Both can be shown in dual dimensions. If this didn't work I would have to drag out the conversion calculator. If Chief doesn't do a direct conversion it will be the calculator.

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This is a great answer!  But how do I keep the house itself from sinking 100 feet below the terrain?  How do you re-set the zero point of the ground floor to place it at 334.84 meters?  Maybe this is obvious, but I don't think I've ever had to do this.

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CA does a direct conversion.  So, if you enter 33m in the dbx, then CA will automagically convert to 1299 3/16".

 

jon

 

and we have a Winner :)  I didn't know it did that either ,always thought it was either imperial or metric per plan only , even though it displays both if needed.

 

here Surveys are in decimal feet not Feet ( a PITA), but I've never seen one in Meters either  , guess it depends on which City you have to please...

 

I'd be surprised if the Surveyor can't convert it at the touch of a button on his equipment too though.

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Have a look at Preferences...General...Unit Conversions.

These are all the conversions you can do OOB.

You can even create additional units if you need to - although all the included ones should cover just about any situation unless you require furlongs, chains, etc.

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Jon's method works really slick. I discovered it a while back and have been using it ever since. Kudos to Chief for this feature! I input all my site dimensions in metric into my imperial plan and then I have dimension sets for my own site plans that display both units. Then the folks on the job site don't need to convert anything.

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CA does a direct conversion.  So, if you enter 33m in the dbx, then CA will automagically convert to 1299 3/16".

 

jon

Thanks Jon,  I did  to know that.  And to be clear,  one must put in 5m and not 5M for it to work.  The units are case sensitive.  Really nice tip Jon.

 

 And of course by using secondary formatting,  you can either show both imperial and metric or only metric or only imperial. Very flexible. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks, everyone.  Entering the metric numbers and having them automatically convert to inches seems to have done the trick.  There was some finagling with terrain holes involved to get things looking reasonable on the side with steps leading down to a sunken patio, but the client is happy and says this looks correct to him.  

 

Even after all these years, terrain is still a PITA for me and I spend way too much time getting it right.  :-(  Thanks for your help!

 

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