On 2010/06/10, at 02:12 , <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> wrote:
I returned Monday from a visit with my son and his family in
Missouri. My son is a graphics artist who works at the Spirit of
St. Louis Airport.
Many of my son's clients do business internationally. They require
that the layouts fit nicely on mm dimensioned sheets of paper.
SI is the language of international business. Get with it!
Dear Gene,
It is also the common practice in Australia to layout drawings and
designs on paper specified in millimetres.
In the early days of this practice (early to mid 1970s) there were
some who balked at the size of some of the numbers – but they soon got
over this as they enjoyed the overall freedom from all the different
kinds of fractions.
As a flavour of using millimetres in this sense you might like to read
this article about page borders: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/PageBordersInchesORmillimetres.pdf
where I calculate the paper savings in square millimetres.
One of the area figures I report was 43 690 mm^2 and when a friend
remarked, 'That's a big number!' I replied, 'True, but do you think
you could handle such a big number if it was a prize you won in a
lottery?', she replied, 'I could handle an even bigger number in those
circumstances.' I suppose it is often a matter of context whether a
number is large or small, and that in turn is a matter of familiarity
that takes a little time to learn – typically about two weeks in the
Australian drawing and building trades.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
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