I like imperial and was the (one) person to vote for it. That said, I design in both and am comfortable with either, except for pressure units pa-freaking-scals? what the heck are those? OK 100kPa is about 1 bar, but I do better in psi. a car tire is 30~35, a bike tire is 45~90. Inches of water is also nice, escpecially when dealing with large areas because it allows you to visualize the pressure as actual water and realize that 5 inches of water on a door of a room will make it a deadly booby trap to open.
Well lucky for UK currency they switched to the Metric system in the 70's. Growing up with 240 pennies in a pound didn't make much sense. 100 pennies in a pound is a much better system thanks to decimilization. When I was in the UK school system in the 70's they were switched to Centigrade instead of Farenheit. I had got use to feet, yards, stones and lbs as measure in the UK and then when we moved to Canada. Now we were learning Kilograms, and metre measure. But about 25 - 30 years later in this trade I'm still using both mm and in measure. Dealing with US and Canadian customers, there still seems to be confusion in a comapany's internal organization on what unit to use. Some US companies spec. Metric measure and metric fasteners on their tooling, but want the pins and bearings to be inch components since they are more readily availabe in this market. More than half of the designs I do have both inch and metric componenentry. Som of you had all mentioned the need to detail drawings in dual units. Luckily the last few companies I worked for had gone printless and we were issuing the shopfloor full 3d models. The cutting software was also full 3d with automatic hole recognition, which would tell the operator which cutter it would need for the hole size shown. But I still got a chuckle occasionally when an apprentice is looking around the shop for a 12.7mm drill and is frustrated that he can't find it. So you point out that a 1/2" drill is what he wants, and you get that dog-head-tilt look. From what I've seen in Southern Canada print making was dead 8 years ago. But out here in the Western Canada print generation is still in high-demand. So being out West I guess I'm back to dual dimensioning again. The multi-unit measurments don't seem like they will go away any time soon. Even in my own personal life am xx feet and xx inches tall, and xxx lbs. I buy fuel by the litre, and I should measure distance by kilometre, but being Canadian now means I measure distance by the time it takes from place to place. i.e. When a passer-by says how far to the next gas station the Canadian response is 10 minutes.
Gotta be metric, I largely use imperial because the shop machines are older (therefore imperial). But Canada is supposed to be solely metric, occasionally I make conversions for projects. But Hey! Common sense dictates to use metric!
As we know, the wold business need us use the same standard. The knowldege is easy shared when we use the same standard. Different standard will make mistake meaning in business. I am prefer Metric(Just because I am born in a metric wold)
Metrics!! I understood that imperial/metrics confusion have made spaceships to malfunction even! Why is it so important to keep such strange system to the americans?
What may seem strange to you is completely normal and natural to someone else. The imperial system is really based on binary math (1 inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16...etc) you see, so it is much more efficient computationally than a decimal-based system such as SI units. Maybe is is the Americans and a few die-hard English folk who have it right! After all which is more advanced, computers (binary) or fingers (decimal)? It all depends on how you look at it.
Sorry if I stepped on someones toes, it was not my intent. I only question just what you just wrote, that a binary system is easier for us humans to use. For computers, for sure, but for us? I mean who makes quickly an addition of 2 1/16 + 3 3/4 ? 5,23875 + 9,525 is on the contrary even possible to make in the head in some 5 secs, at least roufly... But maybe those anglosaxian have developed use of some un-used gene in mathematics that I dont use... :roll:
Well, that's one way of looking at it. I disagree that the imperial system is "really based on binary math". You've presented fractions with a power of 2 in the denominator. Any unit of measure can be thusly subdivided. The big distinction with SI is the units of measure themselves and how they interrelate. To Wit: how any cubic inches in a gallon? Yards in a mile? Foot-pounds of energy in 180 grain slug going 2100 fps? I think you get the idea. I see absolutely no defense of the Imperial system in your post. Powers of 2 v. Powers of 10. Not the main difference by a long shot..
