POLL: Meters or Millimeters in your country?
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Thanks to fellow forum member TIG, I found out that not all architects in metric countries dimension their plans in meters: It turns out in the UK they do so in millimeters. In Ecuador it's the other way around: Architects dimension in meters and engineers do so in millimeters.
How's the situation in your country?
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In France, I always saw centimeters in architecture offices.
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I agree.
Most of the EU [Ill advisedly] use cm for architecture - I'm not sure about engineers/surveyors. but I suspect m ?In the UK [and Ireland at least?] and probably some other locales [AU/NZ/SA ?] it's always mm for architects - avoiding decimal cm...
So your survey options need to be expanded accordingly !?
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In Sweden it's millimeter.
Landscape architects often use meter. -
South Africa, for architecture & engineering, it is mm, but land surveyor here often use m.
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Thanks everyone for your replies so far.
So far, architects dimension their plans in:
Meters:
Ecuador, Mexico (and maybe the rest of Latin America).Centimeters:
France (and maybe most of the EU)Milimeters:
UK, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden (and maybe AU and NZ)Isn't there some kind of international standard for this? There should be, somewhere...
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Iām surprised about cmās being used professionally, Iād always thought of them as being for children and civilians.
Cmās are useful as they can be āseenā and touched when in 3D form (I remember wooden coloured sticks when I was a kid we used to learn about lengths/volumes) but the idea of using them in a professional environment seems very odd.
Whenever Iāve had to oversee some 17 year old oink who thinks theyāre the bees knees when it comes to designing I end up spending most of my time trying to get them to understand mm. -
Why is it that odd? It's just a matter of convention after all.
Plus, I can see where it comes from : cm is pretty much the precision scale in architecture. You cannot build a building with a millimeter precision. The best you can do is around one cm. -
As long as I'm not using feet and inches everything is fine.
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Sit Surveyors always measure plots in m's and produce site drawings in m's in UK/Ireland as the Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is in meters. However when architects get these drawings they often scale up the drawing by X1000 as they use mm's, thus destroying the integrity of the grid. This drawing is then sent on to the setting out engineer with a very odd Grid reference system!
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I mostly work with UK architects. Supplied dwgs tend to be labelled in metres, but drawn in millimetres.
When discussing changes with architects they often switch between m, mm or cm - depending on which aspect of the design is being discussed.
I personally prefer to model in cm.
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Hey, Hieru. That's something I've also seen...
Sometimes some people use AutoCAD units that don't match the units for dimension. For example, an engineer once sent me a plan where 1 AutoCAD unit = 1m, but it was dimensioned in mm. All other plans this engineer sent me were both drawn and dimensioned in mm. And yes, these inconsistencies can be a headache... Not with SketchUp files, but with AutoCAD files.
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Yes, a real headache! I can count on one hand the number of architects I've worked with who produce faultless and consistent drawings.
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In the UK...
Older people are imperial - feet/inches/lbs - many can also think in metric...
Younger people are metric - m/cm/kg - but many will still think in '/" for heights, miles for distances/speeds and stones/lbs for personal-weights
For almost 50 years the construction industry has used mm for all key setting out dimensions [architects/engineers] - unless very large dims - like master-planning when m is used.
For setting out m co-ords are usual - because of surveyor connections...
However, surveyors of both land and quantities always use metres.
Civil-engineers 'fall between two stools' ! Land in m and detailed structures in mm !!
'Commercial' surveyors like dual-units for areas - sq'/sqm and acres/hectares !
Because of longstanding imperial heritage things like domestic door-leaves are still made/available to standard imperial sizes - dual-labeled in mm and ". -
In Australia, mm for everything.
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Belgium
Architects : cm
Engineers : mm
Contractors : bothit's complicated
erikB
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In Canada (officially metric, but stubbornly imperial in much of AEC industries), it's bloody complicated!:
Architects: ft-in, or ft-in & mm
Contractors: ft-in
Engineers: mm
Surveyors: m
Interior Designers: ft-in
Cabinet shops: mostly mm (32 mm Euro), old-school still use in
Furniture makers: in -
Wow! Canada certainly takes the cake here in messed up combination of measurements!
I just googled "32mm Euro"... Thanks for sharing that!
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