Recently in Working in Feet and Inches Category

Divisions in metric dimensions are separated by a space in the front design dialog. When working in feet and inches, a semicolon is used instead. A front design thus may look like the following example:

Unlike interiorCAD 2, interiorCAD 3 will default to metrics instead of imperials. Thus we will provide an extra installer which will replace some metric files by imperial files.

Additionally interiorCAD 3 provides a new command »Import Resources...«. The libraries for this cool new feature are rather huge, so we offer an extra installer for them. These libraries are not necessarily needed to run interiorCAD 3, but we highly recommend to install them (except you have a very slow internet connection or less space left on your hard drive).

The recommended installation order is as follows:

• A fresh install of VectorWorks 12. InteriorCAD 3 will not install or run on top of previous versions of VectorWorks. We recommend to keep your previous version of interiorCAD as it is for later reference. It is neither needed to uninstall it nor it is recommended to install interiorCAD 3 over any existing version of interiorCAD
  
• The default interiorCAD installer (which comes with metric defaults)
  
• Optionally the libraries if you intent to use the cool new resource importer
  
• Optionally the imperial resources if you intend to work in imperials
  

For people who need to work in a mixed environment, here is some background what the imperial installer changes in your VectorWorks installation folder:

• A new imperial template file gets added to the templates folder
  
• The folder ./Plug-Ins/XG Resources/, which contains metric default values, will get copied. This ensures you have access to it at a later time and favourites you may have created can easily get restored. The same is valid for ./Plug-Ins/data/xg/ which contains default values for some tools (like adding a fill to a frame)
  
• The installer now will replace some files in ./Plug-Ins/XG Resources/ and ./Plug-Ins/data/xg/
  
• If necessary, the installer will make changes to the libraries if installed
  

Here are some tricks and techniques when working in a mixed environment:

• You will have two interiorCAD template files, the metric and the imperial template. You can start a new drawing with the metric template file, even if you have the imperial defaults installed. Using the metric template file will not cause any troubles, except that the default values in units will read as numbers with some decimals (e.g. unit sides will default to 19.05mm instead of 19mm)
  
• If you want to use both imperial and metric favourites in your units, you can simply copy over the desired favourite files from the metric XG Resources folder that the imperial installer has copied. Using metric favourites in an imperial drawing will not cause any troubles, except that the values in units will not read as nice fractions but as numbers with some decimals
  
• If you intend to use both imperial as well as metric boards in your units, you can concatenate both files. The files simply are text files called Boards.txt. When concatenating both files, please ensure the header only exists once and reads as the first line of the file only
  
• If you don't want to mess imperial and metric resources, you can switch back and forth between both simply by renaming both XG Resources folders. interiorCAD will always use the values found in the folder XG Resources. So if you have two folders called
  XG Resources and XG Resources Metric
  you can switch to metrics simply by renaming them like
  XG Resources Imperial and XG Resources
  Doing this will not cause any trouble, except that using an imperial template file with metric resources will make units displaying some decimal values instead of nice fractions
  
• What you never should do is switching back and forth the units in a drawing which already contains a unit. If you start with a metric template file, you place a unit and you do some front design, the front design can get damaged or lost if you switch units in the drawing. When editing a unit under such circumstances, the unit will complain and tell you that the front design will be deleted. If you press cancel and leave the unit, nothing will change so you have the chance to switch back the units of the drawing
  

If you're working with imperial measurements and want to input ".625" instead of "5/8", make sure to enter "0.625". Some fields in interiorCAD won't accept imperial measurements with leading decimal points.