Working Units to be part of Work Environment?

[Laszlo Nagy]

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?

[Erika Epstein]

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.

[Laszlo Nagy]

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.

[Stress Co_]

I made a WISH.

[Erika Epstein]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Laszlo Nagy]

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.

[David Maudlin]

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

[SeaGeoff]

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.

[Laszlo Nagy]

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.

[SeaGeoff]

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.