Can you convert height units to something usable?

I am always amused by rail gauges being expressed as a mixture of units in the Imperial system.

Standard gauge in particular - 4ft 8 and 1/2 inches - has the contortions of two units (feet and inches) as well as whole numbers and a fraction.

When Australia started the process of converting from Imperial to Metric, and converted fully unlike the UK which got stuck halfway, one major home project builder conducted an experiment. They built two identical homes, one using standard imperial measurements and the other using the equivalent metric measurements with the builders supplied with the correct measurement tools for each project. The time taken for the two builds, allowing for weather, was the same. However the waste produced, largely through measurement and calculation errors, was significantly less in the metric project.

Builders made more mistakes when measuring and converting mixed imperial units (e.g. feet and inches and fractions) than they did when using metric - for example cutting a wooden beam too short. The Australian standard for metric measurements in the building industry forces all measurements to be in millimetres only (centimetres and metres are not allowed) and whole numbers, no decimal places.

So standard gauge track is specified as 1435mm. If a wall is to be constructed with a length of 5m then it must be specified and measured as 5000mm (no commas either).
 
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While I can "get" inches, feet and yards, sort of, but rods, furlongs and chains - I don't. And don't get me started with fractional sockets, wrenches and drill sizes. Always picking the wrong size whereas my metric ones are a nice even progression in sizes.
 
While I can "get" inches, feet and yards, sort of, but rods, furlongs and chains - I don't. And don't get me started with fractional sockets, wrenches and drill sizes. Always picking the wrong size whereas my metric ones are a nice even progression in sizes.
@martinvk - Yes, I agree with you. My first car was a 1975 Chevrolet Impala, so Imperial tools.

My next car a U.S. spec 1979 Honda Accord, so metric. Bought all new tools, and was happy that most of the bolts were 10, 11 or 12 mm for most maintenance.

Next car, was a 1982 BMW 318i, all good. Easy working on that car too. Unfortunately that year BMW had some of the worst quality control and component specs for any year in the 80's Beemers.
Car slowly fell apart around me, LOL.

Next was 1995 Jeep Cherokee, mix of Imperial and metric.

All of my current tools are metric, except certain wood working measuring tools.



Rico
 
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Back when I was in 6th grade, this would be around 1973-74, we started to learn and use the metric system here in the US. Some of our road signs had both miles and kilometers and we dove deeply into weights, temperature, and other measurements. We found it "hard" at the time and the US gave up on it rather stupidly, in my opinion. Up until a few years ago, some of the road signs on the freeway still showed the distance between major cities in both measurements then they disappeared when the exit numbers were redone. Our packaging though has kilograms, grams, and liters and some temperatures are in Celsius in addition to the imperial measurements.

Little did I know that little kernel that was planted 50-plus years ago now would come back to bite. After using the metric system briefly at my old job where I wore many hats, I didn't touch it until I bought TRS2004 and from then on converting between each measurement is done in my head and if I'm unsure, I grab the calculator. I can thank Auran for forcing me to use the metric system full-on!
 
While I can "get" inches, feet and yards, sort of, but rods, furlongs and chains - I don't.

Its easy as any 18th or 19th Century surveyor (or school kid) could tell you.
  • 1 Rod (aka Pole or Perch) = 16 and 1/2 feet, or 5 and 1/5 yards, and as any farmer would know, an acre is exactly 40x4 rods in size.
  • 1 Chain = 66 feet, or 22 yards and, as every sporting fan would know, is the official length of a Cricket Pitch (Cricket being the superior form of Baseball). Chains continued to be used in railways, at least up to the arrival of the metric system here in Australia, with the distance from a starting point expressed as so many miles and chains.
  • 1 Furlong = 10 Chains (660 feet or 220 yards) and was commonly used in horse racing to measure the length of the track but, here at least, has been replaced by metres. Furlongs are still in use in horse racing in the USA and UK.
 
So again, the question remains why can't Trainz, a computer program that says it supports the "Imperial" system of measurement allow a user to input values using the "Imperial" system of measurement? You point out how easy it is to do with a computer, so why doesn't Trainz do it?

Multiple off topic posts about about cars and obscure units of measurement aren't answering the question and neither are posts implying to just do it by hand. A lot of money and man hours were invested into improving Surveyor. Features were improved to give the user more power and control and yet the trivia (according to you) process of having the program do the internal conversion of meters to feet for display or feet to meters for input is deemed not necessary.
 
So again, the question remains why can't Trainz, a computer program that says it supports the "Imperial" system of measurement allow a user to input values using the "Imperial" system of measurement? You point out how easy it is to do with a computer, so why doesn't Trainz do it?
Putting my serious mode on and drawing from examples used in some of the "obscure references" above, I would suspect that the answer may be complicated by the question of "which form of the imperial units would everyone agree on?"

Should short distances be displayed using Imperial measurements in inches, feet or yards? Hopefully not feet AND inches as in 3ft 6in.
Longer distances in miles or chains with the latter being in common railway use in UK and Australia?
Should fuel/tanker loads be in Imperial or US Gallons? I can see plenty of scope for confusion there.

Some thoughts.
 
Should short distances be displayed using Imperial measurements in inches, feet or yards? Hopefully not feet AND inches as in 3ft 6in.
Longer distances in miles or chains with the latter being in common railway use in UK and Australia?
Should fuel/tanker loads be in Imperial or US Gallons? I can see plenty of scope for confusion there.
For measurements, generally it's feet-inches, or just inches. 1 Ft 6 inches or 18 inches. It depends upon the context. Standard gauge track is 4 Ft 8-1/2 inches.

Volume measurements are generally, quarts and gallons for larger quantities. I don't think ounces and teaspoons are used for filling tank cars. ;-)

Distances could be in both Imperial measurements based upon region settings. For those that use the UK measurements, they would appear if the region is set to UK.

The problem we have is this was half-completed way back in the very beginning and essentially, the imperial or metric buttons are broken and have been for the past 24 years.
 
If you create a new route set to metric you get decimal meters for distance. height is also in decimal meters.
If you create a new route set to imperial you get decimal feet for distance. logic would have height also be in decimal feet and not decimal meters as it is currently.

why is this so much more complicated than it has to be?
 
I just made a curious discovery.

In Trainz Plus (both in Classic and S2.0) there are two spline rulers - Ruler Imperial and Ruler Metric. They replace the original ruler object that previously coloured our routes.

It does not matter which one you select, they will both show metres when the route is set to Metric and will both show feet when the route is set to Imperial. The only difference is the colour of the endpoints (red for the metric "version" and orange for the Imperial "version").

As Alice once remarked, "Curiouser and curiouser".
 
If you create a new route set to metric you get decimal meters for distance. height is also in decimal meters.
If you create a new route set to imperial you get decimal feet for distance. logic would have height also be in decimal feet and not decimal meters as it is currently.

why is this so much more complicated than it has to be?
"if you create a new route set to imperial you get decimal feet for distance. logic would have height also be in decimal feet and not decimal meters as it is currently."
This is the whole point. Set it to imperial, all the measurements should be in imperial measurements. Not having it do that has been illogical since Trainz came out.
It would be nice if there was a way this could be fixed in whatever version of Trainz we use. ..( same with thunderstorms )
 
I love this thread.

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I just made a curious discovery.

In Trainz Plus (both in Classic and S2.0) there are two spline rulers - Ruler Imperial and Ruler Metric. They replace the original ruler object that previously coloured our routes.

It does not matter which one you select, they will both show metres when the route is set to Metric and will both show feet when the route is set to Imperial. The only difference is the colour of the endpoints (red for the metric "version" and orange for the Imperial "version").

As Alice once remarked, "Curiouser and curiouser".

Note the sizing of the rulers: Once they average out to a certain length, one has yard long increments with feet interspersed and one has metre long increments with 0.25m interspersed as well.

Jamie
 
I love this thread.

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So? Water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. Seems very natural and normal.
Plus, what is so normal about 8.33 ft, 33.33 yards, 0.018 miles and 6.25 lbs and why the unnatural decimalization instead of the inches, ounces etc?
 
As for horizontal and vertical in Trainz, not knowing what is going on under the hood, so to speak, I wonder if there is a fundamental difference that is not obvious besides the fact that they are both linear measurements.?
The baseboards are always exactly 720 m long even if you want to call it 2362' 2" plus a little bit. Or 0.447387258 mi or 787 yd 1 ft 2 in and a bit. When a ruler is placed, the number shown is a readout of the placed length either metric or imperial depending on what the working units are. Even then they use decimal ft! Doesn't seem very natural when it should be ft, in and then a fraction.
The height on the other hand is an input value but which imperial value should be used? inches, feet, yards, etc. The numbers will be different for each type. I'm sure the UI could be modified to accommodate various types but they might have other things to do?
 
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