World Scale, please

[WilsonMetry]

I'm sitting here lamenting my heritage, specifically, the english system of measurement. Why couldn't I have been lucky enough to have been born metric? 10 vs 12, oh please not even close.

The US really got off on the wrong foot with this one. And unfortunately the architecture (and engineering) profession is the last bastion.


Probably take a regime change now. Help me comrades.

[SWANK-E]

well, one could also argue that the old feet+inches system still has a strong tie with the idea of buildings and the human body proportions.

all you need is to grow 1 more finger on each hand and then it would all make sense.

what i don't get more, is the use of Ferenheit!

[chedda]

Yes your right swank it is good to link measurements to the human form. A good example is the brick which fits the human hand and has shaped our built enviroment.An acre is the amount of land a man can plough in a day also a spit is a shovels length when layed on the ground.The real bonus with metric is easy scaling especially when 1:100 is the norm for architecture. While working on site the engineers asisstant is still called a chain boy as chains were once a form of measurement 1 chain is the distance between stumps on a cricket pitch. Horses too are still measured in hands.

[mikem oz]

95.4% of the world's population use the metric system - only 296 million people out of 6,446 million don't! Those that live in the USA.

And yet the USA decided to adopt the metric system back in the 18th Century! The problem is they never actually got around to doing it. They are now the only country in the world that still uses the imperial system. How stupid are they (joke).

Metric is so much easier, and not having to deal with fractions in measurement makes life so much easier.

[Hotrats]

the metric system is directly related to the human body too (although not in the same sense re. scale). It is no coincidence that the human counting system of choice uses base 10 and the fact that (most of us) have 10 digits/fingers. To count using the metric system you don't even have to grow an extra finger! :peace:

[primocordara]

Originally Posted by Hotrats

the metric system is directly related to the human body too (although not in the same sense re. scale). It is no coincidence that the human counting system of choice uses base 10 and the fact that (most of us) have 10 digits/fingers. To count using the metric system you don't even have to grow an extra finger! :peace:

Of course, also 1 meter is one step (a large one) -thats how we estimate distances on a site- also the disance of the point of your fingers to the oposite sholder - not very usefull

The easiest one is switching scales from mm to km just by moving the "period" or "coma".

BTW: In my country we still use inches for wood sections!
a beam would be: 2"x4" x 3,50 meters!..

[greggV]

maybe it's a conspiracy by the entertainment industry trying to ensure that their back catalog stays relevant ?

I mean, you can do the math :o , there must be thousands of songs/movie titles, etc which rely on a quick and easy identification with things like miles ("8 miles high", "8 mile", "the Jericho Mile",); yards, ("the Longest Yard"), and inches,("Hedwig and the Angry Inch", "9 inch nails").

[WilsonMetry]

Of course I would like to have a simple scale to work on paper.....

but, I think my biggest hurdle isnt so much the numbers as it is the visualization of them. Moving or sizing something 12 inches vs 14 inches is very clear to me. My goal is to do this in metrics.

The numbers are secondary to me. The distance in my head is more valuable.

[sandropc]

This is a very usefull free aplication that converts all kid of units it is allmost indispensable in our work. I hope you enjoy this one, jus unzip it doesn't need even to install jus put in your desktop ....

[sandropc]

And the file...