Guide to Metric Designing for Landscape
Updated on: June 11, 2026
Issue
We've been asked by quite a few Land F/X users in the United States, who are used to Imperial design units (Architectural Inches, Decimal Feet, Engineering Inches, Survey Feet, etc.), for basic tips on how to design in metric. These users have usually been hired to complete a plan in Canada or another metric-based country and need a crash course.
Solution
Good news: Designing in metric is incredibly easy!
- Everything divides/multiplies by 10, 100, 1,000, etc.
- There are no fractions.
- There is only one set of scales, which is a simple ratio like 1:200, as opposed to deciding between 1/2"=1' or 1" = 10'.
- While the actual conversion of 1" is 25.4 mm, you can safely guestimate 1" = 25 mm for smaller items. For example, you usually detail your planting beds to be 18" deep. For the metric version of that detail, do not dimension 457.2 mm. 450 mm is acceptable. This level of estimation applies to anything with similar wiggle room. Just remember, nobody is going to measure 10ths of a millimeter in landscape construction. We usually round to the nearest 10mm (or 1cm) at the least.
Here are some additional tips to help you get you well into your first metric plan and avoid common mistakes made by those transitioning from Imperial:
- Start from a DWG or DWT that originates from the acadiso.dwt or a metric Civil 3D DWT. Why? Because the underlying DWGUNITS are hard coded to a file. As a result, just changing the units and DWGUNITS in files that originated from the acad.dwt (not acadiso.dwt) can revert the units later on without notice and cause issues with LTSCALE on linetypes, inserting blocks, and hatches.
- Land F/X tools will scale hatches and linetypes correctly with a metric drawing created this way, using ISO hatches and linetypes when appropriate.
- Familiarize yourself with standard metric scales. Here are some pertinent resources:
- Site plans are usually between 1:50 (residential) and 1:200 (larger commercial and subdivision planning. Any larger scales can be used for overview plans but typically won't read well for detailed planting plans. Any smaller scales are usually for details or enlargements.
- Most commonwealth countries work in meters in site plans, and mm in details. Most Central European countries work in mm for both. We've only ever seen Hong Kong work in centimeters. We recommend looking at other publicly available plans in the region where you're working, or asking other consultants to confirm what's acceptable.
- You can put a note on your plan or detail reading something to the effect of "All measurements in meters unless otherwise specified." Make sure you know how "metres"/"meters" is spelled in the location of your site.