Dear John and All, I have interspersed some remarks.
on 2002-12-29 08.44, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 2002-12-28 > >> >> As far as I can remember, there was no controversy in Canada about >> the centimetre versus the millimetre. The arguments were metric >> versus inch-pound. The engineers and architects went metric, but the >> house builders would have none of it . > > I think Australia went through the same phase. Pat, mike and Brenton can > clarify this. The reason the FFU-ists lost the battle was that "products" > were not available in FFU after a certain date. Thus a house builder who > wanted to continue with FFU could not do it so easily. You're partly right here. In my opinion the major factor in the Australian building industries speedy conversion to metric measures was the fact that the mindset change was made easy by choosing the millimetre as the 'small' unit. A secondary consideration was the ban on importing of dual rulers and tapes that last for about 3 years from the industry M-day as I recall. However even here the retail traders of metric products did their best to confuse the issue by importing dual scale (centimetre/millimetre and centimeter/millimeter) rules and tapes. You can always rely on traders to be consistent. > If your panel wood is only available in incremental sizes of 1200 x 2400, it > makes it hard to continue with inches if the inch equivalents don't match up > to fit these sizes. If products are still made in the 4 x 8 foot size > range, one can continue with inches forever. But, see how far you can go if > you have to put your stud spacing at 400 mm or 600 mm using inches. It > doesn't work that well and the builder eventually gives up. Most of these are mindset issues. If you ask for a 2400 x 1200 that is what you get, but before you can make that request you have to be confident � in your own mind � that you know what you are talking about (and that you won't look like a dill when you open your mouth). > Get rid of FFU products and you can get rid of FFU too. It is the FFU > products most of all that keep FFU alive. Do you work on metric products before you work on metric mindsets? Or, do you work on metric mindsets before you work on metric products? I think that we might agree to work on both simultaneously. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia
