While perhaps less useful and appealing, the AutoCAD approach is also less "imperialistic". What is surprising is that the situation has never been rectified, not even in major rewrites. Now, if the "CV project at the kitchen table" -legend of the mythical origins of MiniCAD is true, this is not suprising. It is just ignorance ("What do you mean you don't know what an inch is?"). I don't even think there would be a malicious intent ("Well, 95% of the world uses metric system so just to make the lives of the bastards miserable, I'll use inches as default"). Is it so unexpected that software written in the US chooses inches as a default when importing a file?
In AutoCAD, you have to take your objects and scale them up by 25.4 if they were originally created in inches. The advantage to the VW user is that to get dimensions to read in millimeters, one has only to change the units preference. This probably goes way back to the first MiniCAD version. I suspect that in every VW file, all objects are at their root stored in inches, and then translated at the user interface when a different unit is selected. Is it so unexpected that software written in the US chooses inches as a default when importing a file? After all, there has to be SOME default. That would never happen in a VW -> VW transaction. I almost always have to scale a surveyor's drawings by 1/12, for example, or a IU-based manufacturer's details by 1/25.4 (again, I'm talking about AutoCAD -> AutoCAD). You have the same problem in AutoCAD itself when opening an AutoCAD drawing supplied by a consultant. Yes, VW does interpret those numbers as "inches" unless you choose otherwise, but it is AutoCAD that fails to supply any real-world context to its dimensions. VW takes in the raw numbers, which in an AutoCAD file are not linked to any particular scale.
Petri is correct in his analysis and advice - however, the fault is not with NNA, it's with AutoCAD. But what the heck: you can scale objects/entire drawing by typing "1/25.4" to the dialog. NNA believes that the world is measured in inches, unless specifically told otherwise. That usually means that everything is scaled by a factor of 25.4 since a certain Mr.
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