Techdraw dimensions, how to set units to meters

[Kirjaissa]

I' m trying to set the units to m, with three decimal points.
I know how to set the unit suffix and three decimal points, but I can't find a way to convert from mm to m.
How can I do that ?

[Willem]

In the Preferences set - General - Units to MKS

[Kirjaissa]

In the Preferences set - General - Units to MKS

Should be enough for now.
So it's not possible to have both m for length in a range and cm for another range or something adaptive like that ?
..

So while writing this reply, I found out that the settings only apply to new dimensions. A side effect is being able to use two different unit if you change the settings in between, as long as you don't touch them (dragging them will reevalute the text under the new rules). Pretty sure it will come back to bite me.

[gatlib]

Hi everyone,

Needing dimensions in meters in TechDraw, I did try setting

Edit > Preferences... > General > Unit system

to MKS, but I still get dimensions in mm in TechDraw.
I tired without succes to: restart freecad, delete an create again the dimension, create a new page/view, recompute dimension/view/page, Length/Horizontal/Vertical Dimension...

I attached an elementary test case, "Page" is created before the unit change in the preferences, "Page001" after the unit change.

Just for the record, my problem does not seems related to this very old bug, in my case if I set

Edit > Preferences... > TechDraw > Dimensions > Show units

the dimension will always show "mm" and the number will always be the length in mm.

Am I missing something obvious?

Code: Select all

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) (XFCE/lightdm-xsession)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.21.0.33675 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at 0.21.0)
Hash: 41b058e2087de60dc8fef3d3e68c7d0129e13abf
Python 3.10.12, Qt 5.15.8, Coin 4.0.0, Vtk 9.2.5, OCC 7.6.3
Locale: English/United States (en_US)

Note I found the same behaviour on LinkDaily branch, I can post details if that's relevant.

[gatlib]

Another detail: changing units to "US customary" or "Imperial decimal" does work correctly. A simple drag and drop of a dimension updates it in inches (correct unit and number displayed). Reverting to MKS gives millimeters again (and not meters, as it would be excepted).

[wandererfan]

Another detail: changing units to "US customary" or "Imperial decimal" does work correctly. A simple drag and drop of a dimension updates it in inches (correct unit and number displayed). Reverting to MKS gives millimeters again (and not meters, as it would be excepted).

This is an issue with the Standard and MKS unit schemas. Both schemas try to outsmart the user and assign the unit based on the value. In both, you will get mm for 0.1 mm < value < 10 m.

There was talk of creating a schema that was always in metres, but it doesn't look like that was ever implemented.

This can't be fixed within TechDraw, as we use whatever the schema provides.

[gatlib]

OK, thanks @wandererfan for confirming the issue and pointing its source.

The only work-around I found is to manually edit the dimensions with arbitrary text, tedious but still possible in my particular case today.

There was talk of creating a schema that was always in metres

Do you remember where this discussion took place? Just to see if I have to propose a feature request for a "dumb" schema ("smart" things rarely fit my needs...) that only uses units it was asked to.

[wandererfan]

Do you remember where this discussion took place? Just to see if I have to propose a feature request for a "dumb" schema ("smart" things rarely fit my needs...) that only uses units it was asked to.

This one, I think: viewtopic.php?t=71365

[gatlib]

Great, thanks for the pointer. Indeed there already is a feature request open.
However I'll report in the other thread that the range above which the length should switch to MKS does not work for me.