If I ever get a chance to use one, I'd go back to 1993 and SSSSCCCCHHHHLLLLAAAAAPPPPPP EVERYONE who was complicit in the implementation of metrication :pissed:......
Yes- I DO think that would be the greatest and best use of such a device.....
I'd go back to the early 70's and slap everyone who felt that a "soft conversion" would work to convert the US to using the metric system! B-)
Rankin_File, post: 375130, member: 101 wrote: If I ever get a chance to use one, I'd go back to 1993 and SSSSCCCCHHHHLLLLAAAAAPPPPPP EVERYONE who was complicit in the implementation of metrication :pissed:......
Yes- I DO think that would be the greatest and best use of such a device.....
Who knew it would be such a cluster,,,,,,,,I was kinda for it, or at least it didn't bother me much until doing the first project,,,,
Do you still do them? I think the last bitter end of mine were in 2012,,,,,,,,,but there are probably some in the pipeline that may crop up 🙁
Those plats were just mind numbing........
Rankin_File, post: 375130, member: 101 wrote: If I ever get a chance to use one, I'd go back to 1993 and SSSSCCCCHHHHLLLLAAAAAPPPPPP EVERYONE who was complicit in the implementation of metrication :pissed:......
Yes- I DO think that would be the greatest and best use of such a device.....
Better make that 1983 and figure on getting very little sleep until 1993. You will be working about 16 hours a day 7 days a week to get to EVERYONE that thought metrication was a good idea. Most fun for surveyors was every state DOT adopted their own highway stationing scheme.
I saw a recent Hwy Dpt plat. 1/2" rebar is now in mm. 12.7 mm rebar.
5/8" is 15.875 mm rebar.
50 foot R/W is now 15.24 meter wide road.
Can I go home now?
It's just not fun anymore.
N
MightyMoe, post: 375156, member: 700 wrote: Who knew it would be such a cluster,,,,,,,,I was kinda for it, or at least it didn't bother me much until doing the first project,,,,
Do you still do them? I think the last bitter end of mine were in 2012,,,,,,,,,but there are probably some in the pipeline that may crop up 🙁
Those plats were just mind numbing........
As recently as 2012 I was still teaching the basics of metrication in highway plan reading classes. Students would ask "If this is no longer used why do we need to learn this?" My answer, "The roads built using metric plans are still out there. Many of them will need upgrades in the future. You will need to work from the metric plans to create new imperial units plans. Have fun doing that!" [sarcasm]We have an entire new generation of surveyors, engineers and technicians that will be discussing the wonders of metrication in the near future.[/sarcasm]
MightyMoe, post: 375156, member: 700 wrote: Do you still do them? I think the last bitter end of mine were in 2012,,,,,,,,,but there are probably some in the pipeline that may crop up 🙁
There are still government organizations that require site work in metric - Smithsonian & National Institute of Health are two I'm working on right now. Nothing looks stupider than construction plans designed in one set of units (parking lot curb radii in 5' increments, 10' separation between utilities) but labeled to the millimeter in metric on the plans.
Nate The Surveyor, post: 375159, member: 291 wrote: I saw a recent Hwy Dpt plat. 1/2" rebar is now in mm. 12.7 mm rebar.
5/8" is 15.875 mm rebar.
50 foot R/W is now 15.24 meter wide road.
Can I go home now?
It's just not fun anymore.N
15.875mm rebar??? 0.005 of a mm is 0.0000164', or 0.00019685". Give me a break!!
Lee D, post: 375176, member: 7971 wrote: 15.875mm rebar??? 0.005 of a mm is 0.0000164', or 0.00019685". Give me a break!!
measured with a micrometer, when you get into the tenths of a mm you need to just stop.........and maybe think
I started work on a 20 something mile long urban railroad corridor in 96 when I was fresh out of school. An ALTA survey had been prepared, around 80 sheets and Records of Survey were being prepared from those ALTA sheets. Aerial mapping was flown for the whole corridor. It was all in Metric. Then in about 99 or 2000, the client said to convert everything to US Feet. So we had some kind of add-on through Microstation that did it. We re-created the contours in a foot friendly interval by re-running the DTM, but didn't account for all the street names (what was 183rd Street now said 600.393rd Street).
From that point on we had to maintain metric and US feet files for most anything we did, except the design surveys (foot only). We would prepare final deliverables in feet only, but maintained metric versions of RW basemap drawings for the various phases of the corridor. M x 3937/1200 = US feet is ingrained into my brain forever.
I am pretty ambivalent about metrification. I regularly have to convert chains or rods from old descriptions to feet. Changing them to meters is no different. There are only two problems with metrification.
The first is that we (the US) are unfamiliar with the units. I KNOW what a foot is. I KNOW how much a gallon is. I KNOW how much a pound is. I don't have a good "gut feeling" of how far 10 meters is, nor how far I could drive on 15 litres of gas, nor how many kg of chicken I need to make my favourite chicken tikka masala dish. But I can learn those things fairly readily. I already have the knowledge that there are 3 feet plus a little more in a meter. There are just under 4 litres in a gallon. And "half a pound" is "about a kilogram" (at least when I'm buying food quantities). So it would take minimal effort for an aging punk like me to make a switch to metric.
The second, and more difficult, problem is how people try to implement it. And this is the issue of the "soft conversion" I alluded to earlier. If you want a person to learn new units, you have to give them things in those units IN WHOLE VALUES! If I tell you that a new right-of-way width in a subdivision in City X is 50 feet, that's fine. That's understandable and digestible. But if I tell you that it is 15.24 meters, I've already given you too much to worry about. That 0.24 meters is the problem.
To convert to metric, you'd have to just change the standard to make new streets be 15 meters wide, NOT 15.24. And you don't continue to sell gas by the gallon, but tell everyone that there are 3.785 litres in that gallon. You sell gas by the litre and that's it. By the way, you sell milk by the litre as well. Milk will be the key that lets people switch in their minds how much a litre is. When a family buys milk, they know how much they need for the week. Currently, every homemaker knows that their family goes through a gallon, or half-gallon, or two gallons, or whatever, during the week. If you sell milk by the liter (and package it as 1L, 2L, and 4L containers), that family will learn very quickly that a gallon milk may last from Monday to Thursday, but the 4L jug of milk will make it into Friday now. Or the 1L carton of chocolate milk is "just a bit more" than the old 1 quart.
As several have already pointed out, there is NO SENSE AT ALL in calling a rebar to be 15.875mm! Or even calling it a 12.7mm rebar. It is a 12mm rebar! PERIOD! And that new roadway being dedicated? 15 meters. Or 20. Or 10. Or whatever EVEN METER DISTANCE the City/County wants to use.
There will always be old conversions of distances. And there will always be decimal distances. When I survey that lot shown on the old parcel map that had a width of 652.35' on the map, I will find that the monuments are 652.29' apart when I measure them. That's not really any different that showing a record of 198.837m and a measured of 198.818m.
I honestly don't care one way or the other. But if it were to be done, then it needs to be done in a realistic and meaningful way. Telling someone that their favourite can of adult beverage is 355mL doesn't help anyone understand the conversion. But selling them as 500mL sized cans DOES help!
You may want to re-evaluate your half a pound is about a kilogram thingy...
My impression is that in some ways anyway, metric would be easier than our present system. Just shift the decimal one or two places instead of having to remember all these convoluted conversions.....
I was reading a related thread some place else and someone from England chimed in.....saying that they use stones for weighing humans (we've all heard that, a person is so many stones), metric for height (if I remember correctly), etc, etc., about 5 different measurement systems ... such an intermingling of systems, I don't know how anybody can remember what the heck is going on.
skwyd, post: 375192, member: 6874 wrote: But selling them as 500mL sized cans DOES help!
They will sell a 300mL can and charge more than the 12 oz can was.
Rankin_File, post: 375196, member: 101 wrote: You may want to re-evaluate your half a pound is about a kilogram thingy...
You're right. I had that backwards! Well, as I said, it would take some getting used to, but I had the conversion factor right, just the wrong direction.
Half a kilogram is about a pound!
Ryan Versteeg, post: 375201, member: 41 wrote: They will sell a 300mL can and charge more than the 12 oz can was.
Probably, but that's capitalism for you, not a property of the metric system.
I'm surprised that surveyors have an issue with decimal units, having converted from inches and fractions to decimal feet continually.
Mechanics deal with metric/standard tools, pharmacists - no problem. My druggie friends know grams, kilos and milligrams - and can convert readily to ounces and pounds ...
Although I can imagine some trucker driving along at 100 kph and seeing a bridge clearance sign indicating 4 meters suddenly slamming his brakes ...:-O
John, post: 375197, member: 791 wrote: My impression is that in some ways anyway, metric would be easier than our present system. Just shift the decimal one or two places instead of having to remember all these convoluted conversions.....
I was reading a related thread some place else and someone from England chimed in.....saying that they use stones for weighing humans (we've all heard that, a person is so many stones), metric for height (if I remember correctly), etc, etc., about 5 different measurement systems ... such an intermingling of systems, I don't know how anybody can remember what the heck is going on.
We have a bit of a mish mash here in Ireland of metric and imperial, pretty much the same as in England. Height is measured in feet, weight in stone distance now in km. The older generation are still stuck on imperial and ain't going to change. My father a carpenter uses imperial but I use metric.
Metric is now becoming the dominant unit more and more as the years pass, as it is the system used in education. I prefer metric as it is what I know and it is the future here at least.
I want to know where the extra 7 milliliters went from all those bottles of Whiskey?
We had a big metric road job, years ago- slope staked the first big 1/4:1 rock cut and set out the rp's, which were at about 4 meters. When we went to stake the second bench we found that the drillers had pulled in 4' instead of 4 meters- the first bench was really wide, and generated so much extra rock that they added an additional parking lot onto the project.
