Hi Eric, I just double checked how the feet & inches is supposed to work.

In Rhino, the way it works is there are actually 2 different settings that you need to set, you set Model units: Feet and then Distance display: Feet & inches.

With those 2 settings in combination then things like coordinates will display with the ' and " marks, like 2' 3".

In MoI there is just one place to set this, under Unit system. If in MoI you set Unit system: feet, that means decimal feet and if you set Unit system: feet & inches, that means foot & inch combined display like 8' 2", etc...


But these settings do seem to transfer back and forth between Rhino and MoI ok - when you export from MoI, if you have set Units: Feet & Inches, it should set those 2 values in Rhino (Model units:Feet and Distance display:Feet & inches).


> and seemed to get confused when I had MoI set for feet and inches ...

Could you describe a bit more about what kind of confusion was happening?

If you had your units set in Rhino to inches rather than feet, then there would possibly be some kind of unit conversion / scaling happening when you are importing things over, because when you set Units: Feet & Inches in MoI that means that the primary units for the file is actually Feet.

That would mean in MoI 1 unit = 1 foot , while in Rhino 1 unit = 1 inch.

- Michael

Hi Eric, also maybe I have it messed up in MoI with the feet & inches unit type being 1 unit = 1 foot, rather than 1 unit = 1 inch.

For architectural units where you are working with the kind of display like 8' 2" , what do you expect to happen when you just type in a single number with nothing on it at all, like just plain 2.

Is that supposed to mean 2 feet, or is it supposed to mean 2 inches?

I had assumed that it was supposed to be feet, but maybe I have gotten this wrong.

- Michael

Hi Eric, well it looks like there is not 100% agreement in different apps for whether "feet & inches" mean 1 unit = 1 inch, or whether it means 1 unit = 1 foot.

In ViaCAD / Vellum it works like MoI where there is a "Feet & inches" option in the units list and if set when you type in just plain 1 it means 1 foot.

But it looks like there are more things where it is based on inches.

I guess I may need to break this out into a separate setting more like Rhino, so that you can have the main units set to either "Feet" or "Inches", and then have an option for enabling combined feet&inches 8' 2" type display with either one.

I'm amazed that this has not come up until now in the v2 beta period. There must not be very many people using feet & inches in MoI v2 currently.

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

Yes, when I noted that Rhino was confused I was referring to it wanting to convert and correct scale.

When I was using MoI for some modeling but using Rhino for most other things I would simply let Rhino convert inserts when asked.

But this time when I was trying to use MoI for almost everything except dimensioning and notes I found that it was easiest, it seemed, to just use inches and tell Rhino to display dimensions in feet and inches. But I often wanted to enter feet and inches in MoI rather than converting to inches in my head for a lot of stuff and that's when I noticed that it is slightly awkward.

Decimal feet doesn't work for much except US surveyor's units ... all Canadian survey data in metric and it is only the building trades sticking with the old imperial units ... plywood sheets are the basic building module and are still 4'x8' ... which fixes things to imperial (with soft conversion to metric when the specs call for metric dimensioning). It is a nutty system that should have been abandoned years ago.

I'll play with this over the weekend if I have a chance so I can be clearer about how I would like it to work for me.

cheers,
eric

Hi eric, I think your best bet for the moment will be to leave the units in MoI as inches (not feet & inches) so that it will be the same as what you have in Rhino.

You will still be able to type in ' " type notation using the keyboard, but there won't be the buttons in the pop-up panel.

I will do some work for the next v2 beta to enable having the pop-up have ' and " buttons available when you have units set to inches.

If you want to type in coordinates into something other than the first field, like in Rectangle where there is a Width: and Height: both showing, push Tab until you get to the field you want and then you can type in your value.

- Michael

Thanks Michael ...

That's what I have been doing ... it works, certainly, but I do look forward to the next beta.

cheers,
eric