BricsCAD Civil > Label Style Editor dialog > Components tab > Text Height units

CADontheBrain

Still no vertical forum for Civil so I post in 2D Drafting again.

I looked all over for a setting that controls the linear units for this dialog. I stumbled upon INSUNITS being the controlling setting. No! I don't like this at all. I prefer to have INSUNITS set to 0, meaning it does not try to outsmart me when inserting external blocks and applying a scale factor other than 1. Anyone who uses metric units is not bothered by this misuse of a system variable. When INSUNITS is set to 0 the Label Style Editor displays mm for units for Text height and others as shown circled in red in the screenshot below.

My drawing is using imperial units (in the US). In the Label Style Editor I want these units to display "in" (inches). In order to get the dialog to display in I must set the INSUNITS to 1. I want Bricsys developers to add a setting under Settings > Civil > Civil General or somewhere more intuitively obvious to control the units in Civil Settings dialog boxes and disconnect the use of INSUNITS.

💡Thanks for listening to me rant.

Wiebe van der Worp

Not sure if it helps but there are very basic rules:

If InsUnits is zero, unitless, then, and only then (!!):

• InsUnitsDefSource is what you set as default unit expectation of the source when attaching, importing.
• InsUnitsDefTarget Is what you set as default unit in your current drawing.

This way you can work with unitless data and still make sure that scaling always works properly.

Needless to say that you might have to change InsUnitsDefSourcefrom time to time, depending on what you insert.

You may want to fiddle a bit with these settings, really would like to know if it helps.

CADontheBrain

Thanks Wiebe. I set INSUNITS to 0, InsUnitsDefSource to 1, InsUnitsDefTarget to 1 and the dialog still displays mm for text height. I am actually working in US Survey Feet according to the state plane coordinates definition in Texas. I had the INSUNITS set to 2 and the dialog shows inches for text height which is what I want. A side note; INSUNITS should really be set to 21 to identify the drawing as USFT if inserted in another drawing.

Wiebe van der Worp

Okay, I think I understand better now. When InsUnits are 0, I get mm in the dialogue too, not unitless. From a historic point of view InsUnits, insertion units, are used for setting drawing units instead of creating and using a family of variables for this, like Measurement, AUnits, LUnits, . Both odd and understandable IMO.

So it seems you are forced to use something else than 0 for InsUnits.

That said, getting mm in the dialogue while working unitless is strange.

Hopefully overlooking something, maybe someone else can shine a light.

CADontheBrain

Hi Weibe, I really want the developers to put a setting in Civil General and discontinue the use of INSUNITS influencing dialog box content which is beyond the scope and purpose of INSUNITS. I wanted to get some feedback from a few users to validate my opinion before making a feature request through support.

Wiebe van der Worp

The way I see it: The function of InsUnits was originally to control scales when inserting drawings. Later on, the value of InsUnits was also used to display units in dialogues. In principle, this is a logical next step, but of course there are also disadvantages.

Returning to your first message, if you use drawing units (InsUnits=0), then in my opinion the display of ‘mm’ in the ‘Label Style Editor’ is incorrect.

The questions remain: Is this a bug? Or is there a setting that has been overlooked?

If no one knows, then a support request is a logical next step.