When you draw to scale in DesignCAD, you are usually measuring the objects in a given base unit of measure. In a unitless drawing, DesignCAD doesn’t care whether your base unit is meters or miles or even leagues. In such cases it is very important that you use the same base unit throughout the drawing.

Let’s say that you’re drawing a house and the front wall is 32 feet long. To DesignCAD, it is 32 Drawing Units. You can draw a line by choosing the Line command, setting the first point (click the mouse or press Ins), then using Point Relative to set the next point 32 Units away.

But what if the next item you measure in the same drawing is 10 centimeters tall? If you draw it at a height of 10 units, it will be much too large. In this case, you would need to convert the centimeters to feet, and then tell DesignCAD the size of the item in feet.

The key point is not to mix units; as long as you’re consistent, all is well. If you use feet, many of the commands allow you to enter distances in feet-and- inches. For example, to specify a line 9 feet 5 inches long, set the first point, then enter 9’5” in the DX field of the Point Relative command.

The best way to avoid unit problems is to specify the units of measurement used in each drawing via the Units of Measurement command.