CADDManager on July 23rd, 2007

Draw things to scale and accurately

It may sound simple, but many CAD users are not in the habit of drawing items actual size. They think that if it is close, it is good enough. Well, it’s not good enough. It contaminates the CAD you have and produces incorrect files. You know that CAD files have a way of being reused in other projects and if they are wrong at the beginning, they are wrong forever.

People assume that you are going to draw accurately. If you do not, and someone does not catch the error, then troubles creep in. Someone may use your file as a background, then offset from your linework, thus making theirs incorrect.

Dimensioning does not always show if something is accurate. You can set dimension round offs very high and still get a “looks good” dimension off of a bad design. Set you accuracy high and dimension everything right. I suggest setting your Precision to 1/256″ for Architectural. This guarantees that things will measure wrong if you draw them wrong.

When you dimension you can set your Precision to 1/16″ which allows for the display of bad dimensions if the geometry is wrong.

2 Responses to “Common Sense CAD – Part 3”

  1. I could not agree more.

    http://architects-desktop.blog.....ately.html

  2. I’ve been told that drawing in Architectural units can produce a somewhat consistant error of “somewhere less than 1/2 of the accuracy setting”. Is this true? Should I encourage users to draft in Decimal but dimension in Architectural, when required?

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