Tutorials CadCraft help Walkthroughs
Type and show bearings and angles in degrees, minutes, seconds
Type a direction as a surveyor's bearing such as N45°23'30"E or as degrees-minutes-seconds anywhere an angle is asked for, and choose how the drawing shows angles with AUNITS.
Written for CadCraft 0.8. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
Anywhere CadCraft asks for an angle or a direction, you can type a quadrant bearing or an angle in degrees, minutes and seconds, as well as a plain number of degrees.
Bearings
A bearing names north or south, an angle up to 90°, then east or west:
| You type | Direction |
|---|---|
N45°23'30"E or N45d23'30"E | 45°23'30" from north toward east |
S10-30-00W or S 10 30 W | 10°30' from south toward west (dashes or spaces between the parts) |
N45.5E | 45.5° from north toward east |
N, E, S, W | due north, east, south, west |
Letters can be any case. In Spanish, O also means west (oeste). d and ° mean the same; ' is minutes and " is seconds.
To lay out a lot line 20 m long at N45°23'E, start LINE and type the first point, then @20<N45d23'E. The same works at ROTATE's angle prompt and every other prompt that asks for an angle, and in the angle box of Dynamic input.
Degrees, minutes, seconds
45°23'30", 45d23'30", 45d30' or 45d is an angle from the X axis, counter-clockwise. The ° or d is needed: 45-23-30 is read as arithmetic (45 − 23 − 30). Minutes and seconds must be under 60. A plain number, with arithmetic (360/7), still works.
How angles are shown
Type AUNITS (or choose Angle format in Properties › Current settings) and pick:
- Decimal degrees (the default):
44.6083°. - Degrees-minutes-seconds:
44°36'30". - Surveyor's bearings:
N45°23'30"E.
The precision follows what you type for AUNITS: 0 shows degrees, 2 minutes, 4 seconds, and 5 to 8 add decimals of a second. The format shows in DIST, on the status bar, in the dynamic input and tracking tips, and in the angle boxes of Properties (a box you edit takes any of the forms above). It is one undo step and is saved in DWG and DXF files ($AUNITS, $AUPREC); LISP reads and writes it as AUNITS and AUPREC.