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We use metric in all European countries. Why is it so difficult to work in metric?
osborn_jones
Member Posts: 1 ✭
Setting preferences to mm for units and 0.1 for accuracy and making a simple rectangle in sketch gives a dimension of 2.345. Is this metric ??! Can you not label the units properly? Very very disappointed with ONSHAPE makes simple tasks horrendously difficult.
-2
Answers
I'm in the UK, use metric units and love how easy onshape is to use with regard to dimensioning, so hopefully there is something simple going wrong in your workflow.
My first guess is that your 2.345 is the exact dimension of where you have clicked your mouse. The precision is the accuracy to which dimensions will be labelled, not some sort of grid to snap to. Is that what you were expecting?
To set the dimension to what you want you have two options.
(a) As soon as you click to make the rectangle the dimension boxes are highlighted so you can enter the exact size you require.
(b) The dimension tool is not just for measuring things but can set dimensions too. So you can click on the tool, then your rectangle, then enter the size you like.
Worth noting at this point that the values to enter for these dimensions are very flexible.
As you have your default to mm if you wish 100mm you can just enter 100, no need to type the units each time.
You can also enter in other formats, so you could enter 50cm
You can also use Imperial units (whilst the default is still set to mm) by including the units such as 12in
You can set variables and use them for your dimensions.
Finally you can use equations for dims so you could enter something like 30mm + 1/8 inch
Hopefully some of that has helped, if not please feel free to ask questions.
Cheers, Owen S.
HWM-Water Ltd
Setting preferences to mm for units and 0.1 for the display decimal should give you 1 decimal place. One thing you may want to check is your workspace units and length display decimals are set to. If it is not mm and 0.1, this could be why you are seeing 3 decimal places.
Here is what I tried this morning :
I'd like to go into a bit more detail, in-case some future reader has questions.
1. As Neil pointed out the setting only controls the display of the numbers in Onshape. It does not in anyway control the accuracy or how Onshape stores the dimension. This allows you to change the units and number of decimal places without affecting your models. This is simply a view of the underlying data.
2. Setting the units and display length in the preferences *applies* only to documents created after the changes were made. i.e. say you created a document with the default settings, changed your preference and went back to the document, you will not see the new settings. This is done to ensure you can view your documents in what ever state you left it at last.
3. You can always override the system settings from the workspace as shown above. This allows you to have documents in different units and display lengths as you see fit.
If you are seeing something outside of what is described here, please share your document and we can take a look.