Using Rulers in Imperial

[steveinvancouver]

Hi,
I'm wondering why rulers aren't divided into inches, when choosing a document to be shown in feet?

Might be something simple, but measuring 5'10" defaults down to 5.1 inches, and 5'11" defaults down to 5.11 inches?

Measuring and checking floor-plans, it would be great if the foot was divided by 12, instead of 10!

[Pšenda]

 

 

[Alfred]

5 hours ago, steveinvancouver said:

measuring 5'10" defaults down to 5.1 inches, and 5'11" defaults down to 5.11 inches

I think you meant to type “feet” rather than “inches” here, but I’m afraid I don’t understand the phrase “defaults down to”. Five foot ten is 5.833333 feet, not 5.10 feet; likewise, five foot eleven is 5.916667 feet, not 5.11 feet.

[RobWu]

Just use metric like a civilized human being 😜

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, RobWu said:

Just use metric like a civilized human being 😜

In the UK, the government of the day launched the Metrication Board in 1963, but when it was eventually disbanded it was nowhere near finishing the job. We now have 500 g and 1 kg bags of sugar and flour, but many things that used to be sold in pounds are still (six decades later!) sold in 454 g or 908 g packages.

I imagine that something like metricating the speed limits on our roads would require extremely careful planning. You wouldn’t want drivers to think that they were suddenly allowed to go up to 80 mph on roads where they were previously limited to 50 mph!

[RobWu]

I know, I was only (partially) kidding😉
Worked for a UK company for a while, and the conversion confusion made for interesting discussions 😁
inches>feet>yards>miles..... <-none of this makes any sense to me, as there is no true division number at all 🤪
height in cm, weight in stones... etc. 😆

[thomaso]

29 minutes ago, RobWu said:

Just use metric like a civilized human being

Metric doesn't solve the issue/bug in Affinity, it doesn't create subdivisions correctly / usefully / as expected, regardless of the unit.

[Pšenda]

41 minutes ago, RobWu said:

Just use metric like a civilized human being 😜

As a civilized human being, you probably don't use a water at home, otherwise you would know that plumbing supplies (pipes, elbows and taps) are not manufactured in anything other than inches. Of course, I was only (partially) kidding😉

[RobWu]

It seems I have touched a nerve here LOL!

Relax people, the world is high strung already

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, RobWu said:

none of this makes any sense to me, as there is no true division number at all

On the contrary, 12 (as in 12 inches to a foot — or, in the days of pre-decimal coinage, 12 pence to a shilling) has more factors than 10 (as in 10 millimetres to a centimetre).

”There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t!”

[steveinvancouver]

First time posting, just blown away with all the responses, I'll go through them all. Just wanted to thank everyone!!

 

[Old Bruce]

@steveinvancouver,

Welcome to the forums. Pay attention to the stuff listed in the first reply, the one from Pšenda. The rest of these replies wandered off into the weeds. Just remember that Pixels tend to be set in DPI (or PPI) and that means they don't play well with the metric system. 300 dpi is 11.811023622047244 dots per mm.

[steveinvancouver]

Yes, I gathered, thanks "Old Bruce"...I'm also a real estate photographer, and I'm busy shooting...I'll dive into "Psenda"s post, as soon as I can.

[Alfred]

16 hours ago, steveinvancouver said:

Yes, I gathered, thanks "Old Bruce"...I'm also a real estate photographer, and I'm busy shooting...I'll dive into "Psenda"s post, as soon as I can.

 Instead of enclosing a forum moniker in quotation marks, start by typing a @ sign followed by the first few letters of the name. When the desired name pops up, click on it to add it at the cursor as a button like the following:

@steveinvancouver

When included in this form, the named user will receive an alert — notification settings permitting — and If someone presses the button it will take them to the named user’s profile page.

[steveinvancouver]

Finally had time to get back to this:

I'd like to take another stab at posting my question....thanks to @Alfred, @Pšenda@Old Bruce, for your responses so far....
So I am attaching a jpeg of the ruler question I have.

As can be seen from top down, I get my floorpans back from Matterport in Pixels
In this example I dragged the rulers point of origin to the known laundry measurements... as indicated by the red arrow.

I changed the unit of measure in the documents setup to feet. (As now seen in the rulers corner).

Changed the assigned drawing scale to get 0.827 ft to read 15.3 ft....... ( I understand 15.3 ft, is different to 15' 3").

Anyway I'm really close to scale, as all my measurements throughout the plan are now very close to those given.

BUT, my rulers, are not corresponding to my known measurements, and that was my original question......I would like to have a document, set up so that the rulers show feet and inches....hopefully the feet would be divided into 12 inches, as in any standard imperial measure .

If I can set up such a document as a preset, then I could open my plans in such a document, and scale the given measurements to correspond to my rulers......that is my wish.

PS in Canada we use metric, but for some reason all real-estate plans are done in feet and inches?

 

[Old Bruce]

15'3" is 15.25 feet.

[Oufti]

2 hours ago, steveinvancouver said:

I would like to have a document, set up so that the rulers show feet and inches....hopefully the feet would be divided into 12 inches, as in any standard imperial measure .

In the meantime, if you choose inches instead of feet, you won't be so disturbed: you'll only have to divide by 12 for feet and modulo will give you the inches. (Laundry = 183" × 36".)

N.B. In the Transform panel, you can enter 15 FT + 3 IN, it will be converted to 183 in.
(UPPER- or lowercase aren't significant, so use what's the easiest with your keyboard. On my French Mac, it's easier to keep Shift key all the way long.)

[PaulEC]

It would be good if Affinity could display proper Imperial measurements, inches (with subdivisions of quarters, eighths, sixteenths etc) feet, yards, and so on, rather than always having everything divided by ten.

EDIT: It looks like I was wrong about Imperial measurement divisions, but I still think it would be better to display Imperial units, rather than displaying metric units. (e.g. 6" rather than .5 of a foot or 1/4" rather than .25 of an inch etc)

[steveinvancouver]

You are 100% correct @Oufti, really a great solution, and I might go to inches, as it may be an easier way.
In the meantime I figured a work around/solution to work in Feet....here's how I did it.

I set up a new document in feet and chose my dimensions as 50' x 40' at 300dpi. I used these dimensions, because mostly all my plans will fit within these parameters.

I then set up guidelines, at 3' high, by my known dimension, which was 15'3".

@Old Bruce was exactly right, 15'3" is 15.25 feet, as the top guidelines show.

I then simply opened my plans up and scaled that known area, so it fitted the guidelines.........

Now every measure I take is matching the measurements I have on my plans.

Thanks to all and this is a wonderful source of information, for newbies like me, very appreciative to all!
Merry Christmas to all!!

[steveinvancouver]

Oh one more thing, I snapped my guidelines to a rectangle which I could input the exact dimension as below....therefor I knew they were accurate.....also the rules as divided now by 12....very important!!

[steveinvancouver]

16 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

It would be good if Affinity could display proper Imperial measurements, inches (with subdivisions of quarters, eighths, sixteenths etc) feet, yards, and so on, rather than always having everything divided by ten.

@PaulEC if you set up a new document in feet, the rulers will be divided into 12 inches