Pleeeease can we do away with Imperial under the hood!

[slbaumgartner]

@dflood

Does anyone know of this anachronism has anything to do with those ‘tiny object’ problems that require upscaling to rectify?

The small edges problem is more fundamental and does not result from the choice of internal units.

Every computer application needs to make a decision about how to handle the fact that computer arithmetic is not exact. For example, if the theoretically same point is calculated from the formula for a circle and again from the formula for a line, the two results are very likely to differ by a small amount. The app must decide whether those two points were meant to be the same (i.e. there is an intersection) or were meant to be different. SketchUp applies a distance test and if the two locations are within that distance threshold decides the points were the same and should be merged into one so that a shared vertex (intersection) occurs. When the two points actually should have defined an edge of a small face, the face is lost.

The alternative, to ignore the issue and just take points as calculated, would be far worse. Vertices would not be recognized as being the same, and as a result even large faces would often fail to form!

This handling is necessary whether the internal units are inches, meters, furlongs, or abstract. All that would change is the specific value chosen for the threshold.

[ChrisG]

Ok, I’m outa here, onward and upward. Thanks everyone for answering, it’s been valuable to me. I’ve realised that each of you in your own way are all correct. But the thing is, I’m not American, wohoo. Poor Americans, no, I wouldn’t dare wind you up about your Imperial system.

And Trimble, here’s my findings - I love SU, I will continue to use it for making quick thinking models, and for turning finshed models into architectural permit and contract drawings that the general reaction to is, “these are such great drawings”, thank you for providing me this tool. I am keen to see how the Layout API pans out.

However, wanting to extend myself into new methods of service and in-house creation tools, SU itself sucks a bit. Dynamic components just don’t seem to be powerful enough OOP somehow. And for a noob, nor are they well supported enough with video tutorials or written documentation. And actually, with DC’s I remembered I’m not even a complete noob, I was making ACAD ones about a decade ago. And the DC resources still seemed lacking. The main resource we are reliant on seems to be asking expert users to volunteer their time.

Then there’s Ruby, yeah it seems a good way to go and plenty of successful developers have, but now we’re talking about learning actual coding, and thats a much deeper investment. It’s wiser I think to learn to code on a more powerful platform. For example, one that has great real time rendering.

And last but certainly not least, there’s this internal inches thing, gut level deal breaker, see above. I’m heading off elsewhere to manipulate clever models via code. Then I’ll pump them back into Layout via SU and make beautiful drawings.

I hope you find this valuable customer feedback, I really am trying to be helpful.

[SketchUp3D_de]

@ChrisG

And last but certainly not least, there’s this internal inches thing, gut level deal breaker, see above. I’m heading off elsewhere to manipulate clever models via code.

@slbaumgartner

It seems to me that a SketchUp user shouldn’t care what internal units are employed so long as everything visible is in the system chosen in Model Info.

No matter what units are used internally, there are going to be values that can’t be represented exactly.

…

[gregor_shapiro]

cubits perhaps (not cubics)?

[gregor_shapiro]

I find it rather annoying that default is inches and feet. I do not feel it irrelevant that inches are used and that when I am modelling I have to remember to change the template at one point or another because the app doesn’t remember my preferences or that customary (Imperial) units are used.

[DaveR]

If you are using an installed version of SketchUp (Pro or Make) the first thing you should have done is select a metric template as your default or create your own default template with metric usints. Then there’s no need to remember to change the units.

[slbaumgartner]

@DaveR is correct: the only reason you get feet and inches as default is because you have selected a default template that has those units. Make a metric template your default and this objection will go away!

[DaveR]

When you click on New to create a new file in SketchUp Free, you are given the choice between feet and inches and TWO metric templates.

You can create your own template with units and style set as you wish. Use a blank SketchUp file that is saved to Trimble Connect. Then open it when you’re ready to create a new model. Remember the first save you do needs to be Save as and you need to give it a new name.

[Designer2020]

This does not work with Dynamic Components. No matter what you select as your template when creating the file, Dynamic Components always comes up with everything in imperial. And it’s a HUGE pain to then change everything to metric. You MUST do that, though, or else it all goes to hell in a hand-basket! Dynamic Components does not deal well with mixed units, even though it tries to convert automatically. It screws up regularly, so it is imperative to set every single component attribute window to metric, then set each individual attribute in that window to metric as well. Anything less, and chaos rules. There should be a simple method for switching DC from imperial to metric (even if it carries on “imperially”, and inaccurately, under the hood!).

[slbaumgartner]

Yes, the DC components implementation has many bugs and design flaws, and the way it lets the internal SketchUp units leak out is an example.

[DaveR]

I was only responding to gregor_shapiro’s complaint about having to select metric units each time he starts SketchUp.

[gregor_shapiro]

Why can’t a cookie reside on my computer or some token in my login information which would force Trimble Identity to load the template of my choice by default?

[Aerilius]

As it has already been said, the internal units don’t matter (even a “unitless” SketchUp would have numbers that relate to classical units by a linear scale factor, thus a unit). The problem is when users or developers are exposed to the seemingly “wrong” units.

That happens in the UI when a default is not set (never chosen template) or not remembered (user preferences not yet saved in web version) or not applied (dynamic components). For developers the problem is when working with raw Floats instead of Length objects (very annoying because non-round numbers are so much harder to debug, and we cannot always avoid working with floats).

I wouldn’t start developing a new application without complying to SI standards where appropriate, because they are neutral (well at least not controversial) and compatible to everything. Imagine the power the SketchUp Team had, if they made metric default in SketchUp for Schools! Millions of students would learn metric (until they figure out how to change template) and the metric transition would happen within the next decade.

@gregor_shapiro

Why can’t a cookie reside on my computer or some token in my login information which would force Trimble Identity to load the template of my choice by default?

An unimplemented feature. If you take a look on the change of preferences format (json) in SketchUp 2018, you see that this is on the way to the web version. When you have a SketchUp account and are logged in, you should once get your preferred template, no matter on which device you access SketchUp.

Currently, when you click “New” in SketchUp Free you always get the template selection.

[ChrisG]

@Aerilius

The problem is when users or developers are exposed to the seemingly “wrong” units.

A really well worded post. An internally “unitless” sketchup would be a good fix. It would avoid all the confused US-centric cries of, “Don’t take my units away”, which was never my intention.