How To Draw A Line With Measurements In Autocad

Issue

You tried to type an exact length for a line using the ' and " marks for feet and inches, respectively, but the length would not apply to the line.

In addition, the dynamic input box may have turned red when you attempted to enter the length, as pictured to the right.

Cause

This issue may be occurring because:

Your drawing is set to a decimal or engineering type unit. The feet and inch symbols only work for specifying the length of a line, polyline, or other dimensions when using architectural type units.
You could also have a setting for the system variable DYNMODE that's preventing you from entering the line length.

Solution

1. Type UN in the Command line and press Enter.

2. Check your units settings and ensure they're the type you want to use.

For Imperial drawings, we recommend either Architectural Inches or Decimal Feet. If you choose Architectural Inches, you would specify a length in the format X'X" (example: 2'6" for two feet six inches). If you choose Decimal Feet, you would specify the same length in the format X.X (example: 2.5 for two feet six inches, or 2.5 feet).

3. Type DYNMODE in the Command line and press Enter.

4. You'll be prompted to enter a value. If the current value is negative, enter a positive value instead. (Your line length issue may be resulting from a negative DYNMODE value.)

Type one of the following values:

0: All Dynamic Input features, including dynamic prompts, off

1: Pointer input on

2: Dimensional input on

3: Both pointer and dimensional input on (recommended)

You should now be able to enter a line length.