It is impossible to choose to have the area in square feet when our SketchUp file’s unit of measurement is not decimal; the option disappears when we want it in fractional or architectural units.
This seems to be a bug. In 2026 I see that it shows in^2 in the model info units, but shows ft^2 in the entity info, and I cannot change it:
But is show in^2 and cannot be changed in Fractional as you show, and I cannot change it:
Maybe @Colin can get the right team member to look at this or reply?
Confirmed. I checked back to SU24 as I had it handy, same behavior. When set to Architectural the area and volume choices are greyed out and list as inches² and inches³ but both display in Feet. In Fractional lists as inches and displays as inches, also greyed out and unchangeable.
Also: The Engineering setting is misnamed, sure, Land surveyors, Civil survey technicians, GIS technicians etc may want decimalized feet (makes my head hurt to divide a foot by 10). But “Engineering” is too generic a term for this setting, there are lots of different kinds of engineers.
And also, while we are at it: Can we just have a “Custom” setting option where I can choose my units for all three types of measurement? No greyed out options. Give me length in Inches-Fractional , area in Feet² and volume in Yards³. Possible?
I’ve also noticed this, and assumed that rather than being bug per-se, it was a deliberate design decision by the developers. I have no inside info about why, but I wonder if they just concluded that nobody works with area or volume in fractional units so they implemented only decimal. Can someone provide a use case for fractional area or volume, or is this just a matter of providing total user freedom?
It has long been a mystery to me how “Engineering” is thought to be different from “decimal”.
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I cannot, fractional area and volume would be odd to me. I can see the use in choosing fractional inches as length, decimalized feet as area and yards as volume, or even sometimes a mix of inches and cm or meters for area when I’m trying to reconcile a Euro material onto a US project. It’s rare and not a big deal but sure, it’s about more user freedom.
Engineering setting is weird, achievable through decimal setting.
Also Also: How about adding a “M as MM” or imbedded x1000 option to the measurements options that would shift the decimal and allow the display of model unit meters as MM in all measurements while keeping M as the invisible background unit. A 3D printing measurement setting? This would be a cool option that would formalize and simplify the work around that many users are doing already to avoid the tiny face problem.
I have the same issue; frustrating. who wants square inches?
Note, it should be lowercase (mm). Uppercase M means “mega”. Just because SketchUp sometimes has odd notions about metric notation like using expressions like “millimeters²” instead of “mm²”.
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