When you select a circle, it's possible to click on the word Radius to toggle the dimension to its Diameter and vice versa. What I was thinking of, is being able to click on the word mm and have an option of selecting, say inches and having the value converted accordingly.



Martin.

Hi Martin (& Martin!), would you expect for that units change of just that one particular field to stick for the next use of the same field (like next time that UI is shown again) ?

And you mean each separate field everywhere in MoI would have it's own individual setting?

Also what about if you switch the units on one particular field, what should then happen when you enter in a new value in that field (as just a plain number with no typed in units at the end), would it use the "main" units, or the "field specific" units for that entry? I guess I can forsee some potential for problems either way - if your default units were say cm but you switched just that one field to inches, it would then probably be weird if you saw a value in inches but when you typed in a value your typed in value was taken in cm. However, I'm also not so sure that having the input units be different on one single field is such a good thing either since you could end up in trouble if you change the field's setting once and then forget to pay attention to that one field being different than all the others later on...

So I don't know, seems like some potential for trouble.

- Michael

Lets see if i can hit it. Basically, a conversion calculator built into that field popup. Maybe it only exists while the edit is displayed, and doesnt actually change units of the object or drawing document.

So, you clcik the circle's property and the edit size appears. Then clcik on the "in" and the unit options are displayed. By selecting one, the value is converted and can be copied. Closing the edit has it remain as it was in units. It's more like a built in conversion calculator. Seems limited to a few doing unit conversion work.

Hi Burr, a popup like that sounds like it would probably avoid the problems that I was thinking of with an actual "direct field switch", I'll give it a try!

- Michael

So the popup could either contain a whole table with all different conversions shown all at once, or it could be a single field with a dropdown on it.

The single field might be better if you were mostly interested in one other unit system, since you wouldn't have as much clutter to sort through.

- Michael

Also is this something that would only go in the properties panel, or would it go on every edit field that shows units?

Because on a lot of them the value in the field is pretty dynamic, like when you're drawing a circle inside the circle command, the field changes when you move the mouse and if you type in a single value there it finishes the command. So for cases like that I'm not sure that you would get anything from having a converter widget.

The properties panel one is different from that that one is showing you the properties of an existing object. So would this only go on the properties panel and not on just every edit field?

Also when you pop out the edit panel when your object is not a line or a circle when you open up the "Edit size" dropdown, there are multiple fields there, not just one, and also multiple units labels one for each field.

Like if you select a box and then open up the edit size panel you get this:



So would that be weird that you would do this unit conversion thing on only one of those fields at a time?

- Michael

Or would it be that you'd see this units popup by clicking on the units label on this spot here instead:



- Michael

""""Or would it be that you'd see this units popup by clicking on the units label on this spot here instead:"""""""

I would think that, and "Only" in the properties panel. I think you calling it a "widget" is more correct. Nothing would persist. It clears as soon as the object is de-selected.

I should stop and let the original poster respond. I may have gotten his intent wrong.

Hi Michael, That's the place i'd like to see it with a drop down box to select secondary units, or just to have a list of them displayed under one another, you have the room there for that.

Martin

Thanks for the responses, chaps!

I think that BurrMan got the idea in his first reply, and the last three posts above this one seem to have just about nailed it. Michael's red arrow is pointing to the area I was refering to (in reply #9).

This would give a level of convenience comparable to Radius/Diam toggle and useful for people like me that often have to work with drawings that have mixed units within them.

It would be nice to have the option that any particular entity could retain the unit setting for display when reselected for editing, but I understand this may make things more complicated - I'd be happy enough to have the conversion revert back to the default system units when the item is deselected if that's more straightforward.


Thanks.
Martin.

So I've been giving this a try, but ran into a roadblock of a current limitation that flyout menus are not set up to change size to adapt to content changes (like when different length text is displayed when different units are switched between on the flyout).

But I'm going to see if I can enable that in the UI system since it's been a limiting factor in some other things before too.

- Michael

Ok - this is what I've been able to come up with, does it look like it will do the trick?



- Michael

hey michael

that does look good...and this will only affect that specific selection, or does it change the unit system for the whole document?

thanks,
marco

Hi marco, it's like a "quick view" of that size information in different units. It doesn't change or edit anything about the geometry or the document, it's just for displaying that particular size value in other units just while that menu is open.

- Michael

Hi Martin (original poster) - ok I think I now fully understand what you were originally asking for which is a way to change the units being displayed directly inside of the properties panel.

So yeah that would worry me about people wandering across this feature by clicking on that spot and then not really understanding what unit setting their file was actually currently set to, I could see someone pretty easily thinking that they had changed the units for the current overall document by switching the units on the panel only.

The way that I've shown in that screencap should help avoid that kind of problem since I think it will be clear that it's just "peeking" at different units just in the popup alone and not actually altering anything. Or at least I hope it will be understood that way.

Maybe it will be possible for me to put in a hook that will enable a script to be set up to do alter the units being displayed at the top level in the properties panel, I'm not so worried about someone getting confused after running a specialized script as I am about someone clicking on things...

- Michael

That looks cool Michael....
Don't know if I ever gonna use it but it is a nice feature...

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Michael.
In my dreams it would be nice to have a kind of 'local units' feature for any particular item in the drawing, but I do realise that this might be a large undertaking to ask of you and I don't really know if it's a practical thing to request.

I much appreciate the work you have done on this and it will be a big help, because the 'calculator' will be right where I need it, assuming of course that it actually ends up in MoI. In short, I'm 100% happy with the example of the feature in use, it should also be handy for scenes that contain a mixture of large and small items as well, I think.


Martin.

Looks spot on for me ... Good job Michael, will it be staying ?

Martin Spencer-Ford (No confusion)

Nice conversion.
Should there be any indication that this is an approximate value, rounded to 2 decimals?
Line Inch +/- ?
Wondered if more decimals would be displayed with other settings?

Hi Martin,

> In my dreams it would be nice to have a kind of 'local units' feature for any particular
> item in the drawing, but I do realise that this might be a large undertaking to ask of
> you and I don't really know if it's a practical thing to request.

Hmmm yeah I'm afraid that does not seem likely since there would have to be some accompanying UI to control such a thing and it would have to be pretty carefully designed in order to avoid creating confusion between the "file's units" versus "this particular object's units".

Confusion over what units are actually active can possibly lead to pretty big errors so it's not generally an area that I feel very comfortable doing too much experimentation.


> I much appreciate the work you have done on this and it will be a big help, because the 'calculator'
> will be right where I need it, assuming of course that it actually ends up in MoI.

Yup, I think the 'calculator' thing as shown will be safe to have, and I have that implemented now so it will be in the next v3 release.

I will also see today about making it possible to use a script to change what units are being displayed directly in the properties panel so that it will be possible to set up keyboard shortcuts to switch that around.

- Michael