Different units for different part studios in a document

brian_brady

I want to be able to set the units for some parts to be inches and some to be mm. I can change the document units and create a new part studio in the desired units, but if I review previously completed part studios they are now displayed in the new unit system. Can individual part studios have different unit settings?

I plan to teach solid modeling in the fall using Onshape and some assignments will have parts modeled in mm and some modeled in inches. I want students to create one document per assignment and make each part in a separate part studio. However, I don't want to have to click on each dimension to know they used the correct value. In fact, I wish I could have all dimensions in the model shown at once instead of going into each sketch, but that is a different issue.

Brian

philip_thomas

Actually you CAN have different parts in different systems of unit in the same document!
So how do you do it?
Easy - create a branch for each system of units that you want to use.
Each branch can have a different default unit.

noa

Hi @brian_brady, 

You are right that the units setting is at the Document level. There is no way to set units for one tab differently than for another. However, whenever you input a dimension, you can type in whatever unit you want. For example, if you have units set to mm but want to make an Extrude 3 inches, you can just type in "3 in".

One common way that teachers grade CAD models is to verify the volume of a part. This is easy to do because you can just select the part from the parts list and then use the measure tool. If the volume is exactly what you know to be correct, then chances are, all the dimensions are correct too.

For other tips on how to use Onshape in a classroom setting, I recommend checking out this blog post and reading up on our Education Homepage.

Best,
Noa

brian_brady

Thanks for the reply. I don't use volume because I want to check that the students have met the desired design intent with their sketch dimensioning. I would really like to include mm and inch parts with native dimensions in the same document however. Clicking on each dimension in a sketch or changing the document units setting will be a major pain.

Brian

philip_thomas

Actually you CAN have different parts in different systems of unit in the same document!
So how do you do it?
Easy - create a branch for each system of units that you want to use.
Each branch can have a different default unit.

brian_brady

Seems a bit of a work around, but hey, you use what you can get.