I struggled with this for years also, usually with a calculator on the desk, often printing the plans and writing converted values on the plans, in my case the end result was always metric as well so double conversion. Somewhat surprising that Carlson and/or MicroSurvey haven’t added an easy way to do this.
Several years I ago I created a LISP routine that draws a building perimeter, takes any unit, metres, decimal feet or feet and inches. The input format for feet and inches is very simple, comma-delimited feet,inches,fractions. For example 25′-10 1l2″ is entered as 25,10,1/2. If your units are set to metric then a feet value is simply suffixed with the letter F/f like 25.51f, likewise if imperial units are set then 6.32m would convert to feet. Saves a ton of time, workflow is likewise simple, pick starting point, set starting direction, then enter first distance, next a negative input is left at 90 for specified length, positive input is right at 90, with other options for non-90 angles. Minimal inputs, no conversions necessary.
Polyline on completion, could easily add a closure check and segment editor to fix mistakes.
Then also a DI2 command that works exactly like the DI CAD command but spits out surveyor friendly bearing and length in metric, decimal feet as well as feet and inches. Takes point numbers as input as well instead of picking points, running inside MicroSurvey CAD.
Jacob Wall