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How to find the size of an existing drawing

 
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SavosInCity
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Joined: 06 May 2007
Posts: 2
Location: Oakland, CA

PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 9:04 pm    Post subject: How to find the size of an existing drawing Reply with quote

am a complets beginner to Acad and i want to find the actual size
of some drawings "DXF," of model aircraft ,to output the parts to a file to use
on a CNC machine i am building. The plans show all the parts layed out in seperate sheets all in the same drawing area. The plans give the size of the wing area and length and fusealarge but no scaling factor to work to, can someone give me any idea how to go about working out the size and seperating the sheets from the drawing, any help would be appreaciated as
i am retired 66 and sratching my head, used to useing propotional dividers
pencil and drawing board system Acad 2005.
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ghimlybab
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Joined: 04 May 2007
Posts: 2
Location: Decatur, IL

PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2007 9:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There may be two things to consider here. DXF is a CAD format that is (supposed to be) language independent. That is a DXF file written by AutoCAD should be readable in Microstation. Your files may not be native AutoCAD but can be openned by it. If you can't automatically open DXF files (I can't remember which release it came in at) you can type DXFIN to open your files. If you want, at this stage you can just save them in AutoCAD DWG format. It is likely that your CNC machine can cope directly with DXF.

Secondly AutoCAD draws in "units". These can be any length you like. Traditionally the obvious choice is millimeters & meter or inches and feet but you could do all your drawings in spitfires if you wanted. Your plans will be perfectly to scale but you need to determine what unit they are drawn in. Once you have openned a file in AutoCAD either LIST a line of known length or use the DISTANCE command and use your judgment to gauge the scale. The main reason it may not measure what you are expecting is if you are expecting metric and it was drawn in imperial.
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