What Stinking feet is it anyways??

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/faq.shtml
What are the "official" conversions that are used by NGS to convert 1) meters to inches, and 2) meters to feet?

[This explaination courtesy of Ed McKay]

First, remember this rule: There is only one meter, BUT, there are
two types of feet.
 
The two types of feet are:

 1. The U.S. Survey Foot
 It is defined as: 1 meter = 39.37 inches.
 If you divide 39.37 by 12 (12 inches per foot), you get the
 conversion factor: 1 meter = 3.280833333... U.S. Survey Feet.

 2. The International Foot
 It is defined as: 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters.
 If you convert this to meters and feet, you get the conversion
 factor: 1 International Foot = 0.3048 meters.

These two conversion factors produce results that differ by 2 parts per
million; hence for most practical work it does not make any difference
to the average surveyor which one is used since they usually do not
encounter distances this large. For example, converting a distance of
304,800 meters (about 1,000,000 feet) to feet using the two conversion
factors, these are the results:

 304,800 meters = 999,998.000 U.S. Survey Feet
 304,800 meters = 1,000,000.000 International Feet

A difference of 2 feet in 1 million feet.

Sending Civil 3D drawing to non civil 3D user

Low-Tech Collaboration
Copied from AUGI Link

There are all sorts of new, fancy ways to share your Civil files and documentation internally and with clients. Let’s not forget, however, the many ways available to us over the years. The first of these methods I’d like to explore is through working with the PROXYGRAPHICS system variable.

Although not a complete solution, understanding how the PROXYGRAPHICS setting works will be your first round of defense for sharing intelligent AutoCAD® Civil 3D® files with your coworkers, subcontractors, or clients not utilizing Civil 3D for their own efforts. Proxy graphics store the last viewed image of Civil 3D objects, which lets users view your drawing without modifying the original objects. Also, they only hold the graphical representation of the current, active viewport when the drawing file is saved.

Setting up the PROXYGRAPHICS system variable is easy enough. Simply type it in at the command line and set it to “1.” The default is “0” and we’ll explore the differences in this section as a point of comparison. With PROXYGRAPHICS set properly, SAVE your drawing.


Figure 1: A drawing file created with Civil 3D, saved with PROXYGRAPHICS set to “0” and opened in AutoCAD®. Note the Civil 3D entities are broken. (Compare with Figure 2.)

Figure 2: A drawing file created with Civil 3D and saved with PROXYGRAPHICS set to “1” and opened in AutoCAD.

It isn’t that simple, though, as there is an immediately apparent downfall of using PROXYGRAPHICS to control the visibility for your Civil 3D entities. The more complex a drawing file, the larger it becomes with PROXYGRAPHICS set to “1” compared with the default. Such a problem this may become, Autodesk even suggests in the Help documentation to save a copy of the original before attempting to apply the PROXYGRAPHICS system variable to your drawings.

Figure 3: The PROXYGRAPHICS system variable has a drastic effect on file size.

The better option when going for a low-tech option for sharing your files? See if you can convince your counterpart or client to download and install the Civil 3D object enablers for their AutoCAD installation (http://usa.autodesk.com/support). It will save everyone time and headaches in the long run. However, proxy graphics are your only option for sharing on AutoCAD WS.

US Survey Foot vs International Foot - DWG - DGN

As a way to make the Survey Foot DGN’s reference correctly into a DWG file I have the following work around.

The difference between a Survey Foot and International Foot is:

1 Survey Foot = 1200/3937 meters = 0.3048006096 meters
1 International Foot = 0.3048 meters exactly

Therefore the difference between them is:
0.3048006096/0.3048 = 1.000002 sf/ft

Or 0.999998 ft/sf

So when you reference a dgn into autocad set the scale of the reference to 0.999998 and it should match.

Ben

misc viewport commands

while aligning viewports in paper space layouts some helpful commands are:

" VPSCALE " a command to list the scale of your viewport

" view " you can save a new model view; also notice the roll angle is the rotation.

This works for me while trying to align a location sketch to the same rotation angle as the master layout.

I will save the main viewport as the sheet number and then in the location sketch I will select the the saved viewport and set it current. ***make sure your viewport is unlocked***

Also the " UCSFOLLOW " command is set to be on (1) and the view will automatically change when you change the UCS. When " UCSFOLLOW " is (0), then when you change the UCS your view of the model won't rotate, only your crosshairs will change to the new UCS orientation.

Viewport to Model space

If for whatever reason you need to export or extract your paper space viewport to model space there is a lsp program I found "VP2MS".

here is a link to the user site that I used to answer my problem.

Enjoy

Insert the layout name in a title block

If you are looking at inserting the layout name into a title block you have found the answer.

To start out edit your block
in the location where you would like the layout name insert a dt object
next highlight the text object and right click
select insert field
select System variable > CTAB (*if you would like a specific case this is where you would select it
save block and you are all set.

Fix AutoCAD 2010 Fatal Error: Unhandled Exception e0434f4dh

Awesome link to fix an annoying problem. Thanks to the contributor


Fix AutoCAD 2010 Fatal Error: Unhandled Exception e0434f4dh1
Ricky Williams March 09, 2011 Apps, News
I was having trouble with this Fatal Error: Unhandled Exception e0434f4dh in AutoCAD 2010. When it happens AutoCAD prompts you to save the drawing and then crashes, usually on startup so there is no drawing to save anyway. Well hopefully the fix can save other people the time of re-installing AutoCAD, which is not a fun thing to do. So read on to save yourself some time.

I searched the web for the error and luckily there were a ton of forums found, but I found the solution at the first one I visited. You can read through the forum thread on Autodesk here if you like. The fix does involve editing the registry, so as usual I must warn that editing the registry can have dire consequences. If edited incorrectly your computer could become highly unstable or unable to boot at all requiring a reload of Windows. You can however backup the registry to be able to restore it and fix any damage you may do, you can find instructions on how to do that here.

Shall we begin, the fix requires a very quick edit of the registry. Once you’ve backed it up using the method above, follow these steps:

In the registry editor go to the following registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.0\ACAD-8000:409\WebServices\CommunicationCenter
In the right pane of the registry editor you will find a key ”LastUpdateTimeLoWord” with a dword value of 4be447d0
Double click this key and type in the value “0″ that is a zero and you type it without the quotes and hit Enter
The key should now have the value 00000000 displayed
Exit the registry editor and the change takes effect instantly

You are now able to open AutoCAD 2010 and work just like before, Happy drafting.