Using Civil 3D: Callouts, Blocks or Details Scale Incorrectly When Placed After Editing
Issue
You're using Civil 3D, and have recently customized a block and re-saved it. When you place one of our default blocks, callouts, or details, it scales approximately 12 times too large or small. You've already checked our documentation on blocks mis-scaling, and are sure the plot scale and units are correct and the drawing has been cleaned.
Related articles:
If you haven't already, take a look at any of the article(s) below that are related to your issue. You should rule out basic scaling issues before moving on to the solution in this article.
- Correcting Scale With Callouts or Labels
- Details Scaling Incorrectly / Detail Out of Scale When Placed Into a Sheet
- Some of My Labels or Callouts are Not Resizing When I Rescale
Drawing corruption can also cause this issue. Are you sure you've cleaned the drawing and rid it of registered applications (RegApps) and other corrupting factors?
Cause
A 2017 update to Civil 3D included a change to differ between U.S. feet and International Survey Feet. This change can also apply to unitless drawings, which we use in order to have blocks that are compatible with Imperial and metric. When you open a block that should be unitless in Civil 3D, that program will automatically change the drawing’s INSUNITS from 0 (unitless) to 2 (feet).
Solution
If you edit a default Land F/X block and find this issue, re-open that block's source file and change the INSUNITS setting back to 0. This manual change while in Civil 3D will stick even after you save and re-open the file. Your blocks will now scale correctly when placed in your drawing.
To change the INSUNITS, type INSUNITS in the Command line and press Enter.
When prompted to Enter new value for INSUNITS, type 0 and press Enter again.
Caution:
After saving this change, you may need to purge out the existing block definition from the drawing where you tried to use it before. This step will allow the definition to read the new unitless setting.
To purge the existing block definition from the drawing, type PURGE in the Command line and press Enter.