I recently spoke to a friend of mine who is in the business of building large warehouse or mall type structures, and I asked him if he used metric calculations in any of his work. He told me that it's becoming more common for the structural engineers to use SI as it tends to produce more rational numbers, and since the lumber or steel is usually cut to specific lengths there's no issue of confusing a 2 foot by 4 foot board with these ones.
He also said that he's slowly picking up on metric whenever he installs countertops which seem to be thickness in mm and sized in meters. Of course he then converts those numbers to feet and inches so he can understand them better and so the building inspector willl pass it, as the building codes around here are all foot and inch.
Progress is slow, but moving. Hopefully someday soon he'll be able to throw out that old inch ruler ;).
Mike
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"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it why can't you?"
