topic Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment? in Modeling

Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:44:18 GMT

I am curious about how people think about this:
There is the Working Units Dialog which in AC13 is now a separate Dialog, not part of the Project Preferences Dialog.
We had this issue in our office that one person likes to enter values and coordinates in meters, but the other one likes to use centimeter because then she does not have to enter decimals.
So to me this looks like a setting dependent of User Preferences.
In which case it may be better located in the Work Environment Dialog.
What do you guys think?

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

David Maudlin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:58:24 GMT

I think this would be helpful. When doing architectural work, I am using Feet & Decimal Inches (Dimensions are Feet & Fractional Inches) and Decimal Degree Angles, when entering survey information these are set to Decimal Feet and Surveyor's Units, so switching between them entails opening the Working Units dialog box and changing the settings. It might make more sense to move these to the Dimensions setting, so they could be changed via the View Map (depending on the view being used), rather than the Work Environment, which I don't normally alter after it has been properly set up.

David

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

SeaGeoff — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:19:29 GMT

I agree with David that this setting does not belong in WE since some users (myself included) like to switch it frequently. Although this could work if the units setting was it’s own WE subset with an available menu item, like palette profiles are now.

Putting it with dimensions is an interesting idea, but it won’t work since the whole reason for making this separate is so each TW2 user can have different settings that are not saved with the project. Which begs the question...

Laszlo, what prevents each of your colleagues from setting it up the way they like it now?

I have a keyboard shortcut set for units, which works well save a few minor quibbles. First, the decimal setting is not remembered, so if I switch from fraction to decimals I have to reset the decimals each time. Second, I would like to see text get it’s own settings. ArchiCAD doesn’t handle points properly, and I would prefer to use mm anyway. Having points hardwired to imperial units is unnecessarily restrictive.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:45:52 GMT

Geoff wrote:
Laszlo, what prevents each of your colleagues from

Nothing prevents them, just one of them was complaining about this.
But it is interesting to hear for me that you are changing this. I mean, I never change it after it is set to my liking: I always display all in meters to 4 decimals (one/tenth of a millimeter accuracy) so I can see I am creating elements for the highest possible accuracy. After that I never change it. This is why I thought this would be good in the WE. But apparently others do.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:33:57 GMT

I switch units often enough to care, but it seems that it would be OK in the WE if it were easier to switch Work Environments.

I don't understand why we have to open the dialog, double click the desired Work Environment (or select and click "apply") and then confirm that we do actually want to do it. It's not like we are making some drastic change that is difficult to undo.

It seems to me a pop-up in the quick options would do the trick.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Erika Epstein — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:04:45 GMT

I think moving it to the WE would be a mistake. It is fast and easy for those who don't want to be working in the dimension profile saved with a view to quickly switch it using Quick Options.

Like David I often work in feet with decimal inches. But that is NOT correct for most views and there for drawings. Woud we then have to be setting Exceptions' to make views read correctly?

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

David Maudlin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:05:06 GMT

So the solution may be to leave the settings where they are, but add named sets (like Dimensions) that can be accessed somewhere (along the bottom of the current window next to the scale pop up?) [even a drop down list that can be added to my custom toolbar would be fine] so the settings can be easily changed.

David

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:19:39 GMT

I don't know if my questions was misunderstood but I am talking about the Working Unit page only: that page that controls the decimals and accuracy displayed in the Tracker, Dialogs and Coordinate Box.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Erika Epstein — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:51:50 GMT

Laszlo,
Good of you to clarify. Now, why don't you tell us why You would like to see this?

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:56:06 GMT

It is there in my first post.
One colleague of mine likes to see her numbers in centimeters so she doesn't have to enter commas before entering the decimals. So she enters 175.
The other colleague likes to see his numbers in meters. He enters 1.75.
So if one works on the same file after the other, they have to go to the Working Units Dialog and modify it.
So I think this may be a User specific preference.

So I am strictly speaking of the Working Units page alone as possibly a part of WE.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Erika Epstein — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:16:05 GMT

As Matthew said it's such pain-in-the-you-know-what to get into the WE.

I think that when working in Metric this is may be much simpler problem. In Imperial, which we are stuck with for the foreseeable future, I change this setting often enough relative to what I am doing that I'd rather this setting be more easily accessible.

Perhaps as Quick Option if a shortcut key to it cannot be assigned. Actually I like the idea of a Quick Option, but open to other solutions.

Perhaps if WE was part of the Quick Option palette? I'm not sure a WE should hinge on this setting.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:19:29 GMT

Yes, it is news to me the people are regularly changing this setting.
For me, it is surprising.
But I get what you are saying, if changed frequently, it may not be a good idea to put it in WE.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Stress Co_ — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:41:38 GMT

I made a WISH.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Erika Epstein — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:20:11 GMT

And in a new twist on double posting:

I think it should NOT be view specific. The idea as Lazslo originally post ed is for individuals to be able to work smart on the same file.
If the toggle is view dependent than there would need to be multiple view sets.

I'm still leaning towards it being another Quick Option tab as this will allow for it without affecting WE or View settings.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:21:03 GMT

Erika wrote:
And in a new twist on double posting:

I think it should NOT be view specific. The idea as Lazslo originally post ed is for individuals to be able to work smart on the same file.
If the toggle is view dependent than there would need to be multiple view sets.

I'm still leaning towards it being another Quick Option tab as this will allow for it without affecting WE or View settings.

I'm with Erika on this one. It doesn't really belong in the WE settings.

It is different in the world of imperial measures. For me the typical setting is feet and fractional inches with decimal degrees (at highest accuracy), but when I'm working on a site/terrain model I typically need decimal feet and surveyor's units, and for furniture and casework I will sometimes work in fractional inches.

Of course the one time I was working entirely in metric the office standard was millimeters avoiding the decimal point comma confusion altogether. We just got used to quickly typing three zeros for whole meters - it actually works quite well.

So I guess that means: Not a Model View Option nor part of the Work Environment, but easily changed per the user's preference. Make's it kind of an odd duck I suppose.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:40:22 GMT

Interesting.
So it seems to me that we who are using metric are luckier in this respect because we don't need to make these changes.
I understand now.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

David Maudlin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:12:48 GMT

I have attached an illustration of the changes needed to switch between Architectural Input and Surveyor's Input when using Imperial Units in the US.

I think the ability to give these settings a named set, then easily switch between these sets would work well. As the units show in the Coordinates Palette and Tracker, a small arrow (similar to the small arrow that allows changes to the Reference Level in the Coordinates Palette and Tracker) in the Coordinates Palette and Tracker would be the logical place, as these units affect the input, not the output seen in Views (Dimensions, etc).

David

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

SeaGeoff — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:53:18 GMT

laszlonagy wrote:
So if one works on the same file after the other, they have to go to the Working Units Dialog and modify it.

I thought the whole point of the new, separate dialog box was that each user would maintain their own preference and this it is not saved with the file. Maybe I have this wrong or maybe it only works that way in TW.

And yes, Laszlo, metric is sooo much easier in this and many other regards. Even so I am surprised that you never switch between m and mm.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

Laszlo Nagy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:29:46 GMT

Geoff wrote:
I thought the whole point of the new, separate dialog box was that each user would maintain their own preference and this it is not saved with the file. Maybe I have this wrong or maybe it only works that way in TW.

Since this is a Project Preference, it is always saved with the Project file, TW or no TW. Only settings in the WE are user-specific.

Re: Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

SeaGeoff — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:14:09 GMT

Not true, at least not in TW2. I am working on a BIM Server project with one coworker, Matt. I always use decimal inches to achieve the same kind of accuracy you enjoy with meters. But Matt prefers Feet and Fractional Inches as is the norm for US Architects.

I just tested and indeed the setting remain separate for each user. I reset my working units to mm, did a S/R, went to Matt's station, did a S/R. His are still set to FFI. Did it twice to be sure, even though I already knew the result because if this setting was transfered with every S/R we would have killed each other a long time ago.

The setting may reside with the project in the sense that each project can have it's own setting, but in TW the setting is per user.

Interesting side effect of this, since the layout settings affect how scale is displayed, if one user has Layout Units set to metric and another to imperial the scales will display differently. Each could print the exact same layout with different scale display. This might affect some other autotext too.