Re: inches in dia?

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

Jason,

I set my preferences to inch and points for the font. That is a pick in the File pull down.

I set my page setup to letter, margins all to 0, and scale to 100%.

THe rulers always read in centimeters - that is the base unit for DIa including for shape creation.

With the margins set to 0, the letter page should be width =  8.5" = 21,59 cm. And the rulers reflect this 21.59 cm across the top of the letter size, marginless page..

I get it that is not what you want.

A couple things to know (sorry if you already do).

For a letter size sheet you need to set the margins to 0 if you want the area between page breaks to be 8.5 x 11. 

I typically use a tenth of an inch (about 1/4th cm). So the ruler will show page breaks that are 8.3" across the top - but in centimeters.

The page set up menu applies to the current DIa, but the other settings apply to what you get when bring up a new Dia. Some of the changes you make may not be evident until you start a new Dia.

Scale and Zoom do different things. I don't think I can explain. Please experiment to learn more.

This is not a CAD program - it has a different paradigm. If you were hoping to set a grid snap and draw shapes that are scaled exactly in inches, then that is problematic.

You will have to think about this to get a grip on it; or at least, as a long time CAD user, I had to.

The work flow for which Dia was designed, frees you up from worrying over exact measurements.  You can turn off the page breaks, ignore anything about margins, scale and zoom level. You can draw an elaborate Dia that is, say for example good for an E size drawing (really f'ing big).

Then you can turn on the page breaks. set the paper size to E, and by scaling fit the Dia into that size of plot paper. Or you can scale it to fit into a landscape letter size sheet. You can span 1, or 2, or 20 pages and applying the margins you have set, it will segment the Dia among the pages, then you can tape them all together into a larger format.

You are completely free to print the Dia any way you want.

Dia is much more freeform than a CAD program. You will have to experiment to learn how it all works. 

Best of luck,

Mike

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 12:21 PM Jason Young <jyoung mtholyoke edu> wrote:

Hello,

I'm trying to set the units for the grid in dia to inches intead of
centimeters, but there doesn't seem to be a way. I'm using version
0.97. Does this feature exist in dia?

thanks,
Jason Young
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Michael E. Ross

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