progeCAD Professional manual The low-cost alternative to AutoCAD

Index



Do you want to try progeCAD Professional?
Download the trial: you can try the product, without any limit, for 30 days!

A manual page a day... Click here to see the manual table of contents.

Working with drawings - Setting up a drawing

Setting drawing units

With progeCAD, you typically draw at full-size (1:1 scale), and then set a scale factor when you print or plot your drawing. Before you begin drawing, however, you need to determine the relationship between drawing units and real-world units.

For example, you can decide whether one linear drawing unit represents an inch, a foot, a meter, or a mile. In addition, you can specify the way the program measures angles. For both linear and angular units, you can also set the degree of display precision, such as the number of decimal places or smallest denominator used when displaying fractions. The precision settings affect only the display of distances, angles, and coordinates. progeCAD always stores distances, angles, and coordinates using floating-point accuracy.

To set the linear drawing units
  1. Do one of the following:
  2. Choose Tools > Drawing Settings.
  3. Type settings and then press Enter.
  4. Click the Drawing Units tab.
  5. Under Change Settings For, choose Linear Units.
  6. Under Unit Types, select a unit type.
  7. Under Display Precision, type the display precision according to the number of decimal places you want, or click the arrows to select it.

The field above this setting shows an example of the linear unit type at the current precision.

  1. Click OK.
 
 
 
 
  1. Select the type of linear units.
  1. Choose the display precision for linear units.
  1.  
To set the angular drawing units
  1. Do one of the following:
  2. Choose Tools > Drawing Settings.
  3. Type settings and then press Enter.
  4. Click the Drawing Units tab.
  5. Under Change Settings For, choose Angular Units.
  6. Under Unit Types, select a unit type.
  7. Under Display Precision, type the display precision according to the number of decimal places you want, or click the arrows to select it.

The field above this setting shows an example of the angular unit type at the current precision.

  1. Under Angle Direction, select the direction in which angles increase when you specify a positive angle value.
  2. Under Angle Base, specify the compass location for the zero angle.

For example, by default, angle 0 is at the "three o'clock" or "east" position.

The adjacent icon shows the current location of the angle base.

  1. Click OK.
    2.  
    1. Determines the type of units you are controlling.
    2. Select the type of angular units.
    3. Choose the display precision for angular units.
    1. Select the direction in which angles increase.
    2. Select the angle base, the direction of the zero angle.