If you are like me, there are many times when you need to convert between different units.
The situation…
You need to convert a length from Feet (International or Survey) to Meters. Maybe you already know the starting value. Maybe you don’t and you need to compute it from your model. Wouldn’t it be great if Civil 3D could perform a conversion like this with only minimal input from you?
The solution…
The great news is that this is possible TODAY. Use the “Units Conversion” feature of the “Quick Calculator” to perform the operation. You can access the “Quick Calculator” from numerous places in the interface. I find it fastest to access the tool by typing QC at the command line.
When the tool is displayed, you can click on the “+” to the right of “Units Conversion” to access the conversion options available.
Based on our example, we would set the Units type to Length and the Convert from and to values to Survey Feet and Meters respectively. From there we would enter the value to convert and the converted value is displayed.
What could be easier?? I’ll tell you… Instead of typing the value into the dialog, you can click on the “Distance between two points” button at the top of the dialog and then pick two points in your model to establish the length you wish to convert.
From there simply click in the "value to convert" cell and your measurement is automatically entered and the converted metric value is displayed.
Need to perform any more operations on the new metric value? Perhaps double it’s length by multiplying by 2. No problem!! Click on the “Return Conversion to Calculator Input Area” and use your converted value in a new equation.
Are we done?? Not yet. After using the converted value in our equation, we can pass the final result back to the command line to immediately use as an offset value, circle diameter… and more.
When finished, we have an exceptionally powerful resource that allows us to perform quick conversions with minimal input as well as leverage our converted results in many different ways.
-Jerry
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