Many people here would refer to "English units" as Imperial measurements.
They also go back much further than the Empire... They are a very natural unit for people to work in, which is why they are still used. Pounds, ounces, yards (an arms length)., miles, stones, feet (on the end of your leg), inches and all the normal stuff. In fact there has been a lot of arguments relating to some stores selling goods in pounds and ounces rather than kilos. totally stupid, as it makes no difference and if it helps som old lady only used to Imperial, then that's fine bu me. A colleague of mine once described things like pounds and stones as a comfortable sized rock that you could throw at someone on the battlefield, (pound) and a stone was the size of a big stone that you could repeatably lift and drop over the battlements onto the invading force. I don't know if that description has any truth in it, but it sort of sounds plausible and gives a good idea as to the natural description I used. A stone is 14 pounds. Body weight in stones is much easier for us to visualise than when stated in pounds. we are simply used to doing things that way. Myself, I've been using Metric most of my life and there is no problem swapping between the systems, so all the fuss is generally due to the politics here more than anything else. In KiCad there must be a way to use both, and more importantly you must be able to use both at the same time. In the PCB layout I don't think there is a problem, as the tracks will snap to the pads and such like, however I'm fairly sure that there is a problem with eeschema in that if the lib grid is different to the current working grid then connections may not be made. I don't think that there is the equ. of a magnetic pad effect. so one way or another that needs some work done on it. Andy On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:30:34 -0000 "Dan" <[email protected]> wrote: > Not true. I'm an American engineer, and I prefer English units for certain > applications (and metric for others). > > 1) The proper name is English units. It has nothing to do with the present > practices of England, the country; that's where they originated from, so > that's what they're called. They're not "Roman" units (how ridiculous), > because the Romans didn't have "inches". This is just like how the English > language is called "English", even though the way it's spoken in places like > the USA and India is very, very different from the way it's spoken in England > presently. > > 2) English units are more convenient for some things, such as temperature > (when relating to humans, like for setting your thermostat, not when doing > calculations in a lab). The Fahrenheit scale is better scaled for the human > range of temperature, and doesn't require messing with fractional units the > way Celcius does. The Fahrenheit thermostats in our homes are in whole > degrees only, because a half-degree of precision is pointless in Fahrenheit > since humans can't really tell the difference. But half-degrees in Celcius > thermostats are necessary because humans certainly can tell the difference > there (being about equivalent to a whole Fahrenheit degree). > > 3) It's funny how UK residents like to claim they don't use English units any > more, when in fact they do: the talk about speed in miles per hour, and they > order beer in pints, and they relate their body weight in "stones" (whatever > those are), not kilos. > > This isn't much different than the USA, where people's speedometers are in > MPH, their weight in pounds, etc., but when they go into a science lab, > everything is in metric. Metric proponents talk about how useful it is to be > able to convert between units so easily with metric, like converting kilos > and meters to Newtons or whatever, but what they're missing is that most > people don't do this! No one is going to step on the scale, read their > weight, and then need to convert that into a torque or force. No one wants > to read their home temperature on their thermostat and then calculate thermal > energy. > > There's a big difference between what regular people do in their daily lives, > and what scientists and engineers do for work. That's why even here in the > USA, most scientists and engineers (esp. scientists) work with metric units > at work, and then go home and set their thermostat in Fahrenheit and read > their weight in pounds, and don't have a big problem with this discrepancy. > > 4) Inches (or more importantly, mils) are still pretty useful in PCB design. > It's easy to remember things like 8 mil minimum track width, 20 mil > track-to-board-edge spacing, etc. Also, many many components are designed in > mils: most chips have pin spacing in mils: 100 mils for DIP chips, 50 mils > for SOIC, 25 mils for TQFP, etc. > > However, more and more components are showing up in metric, and that is > annoying with Kicad since it doesn't have hard metric; instead of .1mm > spacing, I have to choose .1056644353 or whatever. This really needs to be > fixed; I should be able to lay out a PCB with both English and metric > components without so much slop on the metric ones. Why does Kicad even have > this soft-metric thing? If I want English, I'll select English. If I select > mm, that means I'm working with a part designed in metric, and I need metric. > > Dan > > > --- In [email protected], al davis <a...@...> wrote: > > > > On Thursday 09 July 2009, Robert wrote: > > > America is the last country > > > in the world where engineers prefer to use them. > > > > American engineers don't prefer traditional units. It's the > > non-engineers. > > > > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your > question. > Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of > Kicad. > Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute your > symbols/modules to the kicad library. > For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the > kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-develYahoo! Groups > Links > > >
