OK, all my distances and whatnot are in feet and hundredths of feet. The structural steel guys want feet and fractional inches. I'm trying to think what the easiest way to do this.. I suppose take the decimal feet and divide by 12. Anything left of the decimal is inches and then the poop to the right I take to my handy decimal to fractional chart to get the nearest 1/16th of an inch. I suppose I could change the units on my ACAD and let the machine do it.
>I suppose take the decimal feet and divide by 12. Anything left of the decimal is inches and then the poop to the right I take to my handy decimal to fractional chart to get the nearest 1/16th of an inch.
Well, those architects would probably prefer it if you multiplied the fractional feet by 12 inches/foot.
🙂
I think I got it wrong already. It's MULTIPLY by 12.
Thinking out loud here helps....
Thanks, Kent.
So far, it looks like the worst case column is out 1/8".
I am very pleased with the results of this survey so far (knock on virtual wood). The only thing I might do different next time is try to get a platform for the tripod that connects to one of the exposed girders or otherwise fix the tripod to said girder. It was a pain dealing with the movement of the instrument on the tarred roof.
The easiest conversion method for me would be Excel spreadsheet with some formulas using trunc() and formatting the result as a fraction in 1/16ths (if that is adequate). Unfortunately, the old version I does not offer 32nds, but does have tenths and hundredths.
If decimal feet is in cell A4 then
cell B4 is feet with formula =TRUNC(A4,0)
and cell C4 is inches with formula
=12*(a4-b4) formatted as fraction
Andy
The feet are easy to do..no conversion 😛
Grab a yo yo or stick rule and just read the fractional direct, if you feel comfortable doing so 🙂
I can see where the structural is coming from and I do agree with his request./
Who can think like an Architect? Oh Boy!!
Architects and "Steel Guys" are afraid of making an error of consequence, so they want you to make it for them. Someone to blame, in their eyes. They should let their math education work for them, IMHO. That's their problem, however.
BTW, did you guarantee them 0.005'+/- by contract? I would have been tempted to charge a bunch extra for such an accuracy extravagence, then done the redundant work to back it up.
Don't miss a chance to make a buck from someone who is unwilling to turn on a calculatior.
WB
Who can think like an Architect? Oh Boy!!
Bill has it right!!!!! That's exactly what I did last time I worked for NASA/Northrup Gruman. And it paid off.
Who can think like an Architect? Oh Boy!!
No, the small numbers are for me. I'm trying to get a feel for the difference between my numbers that I know and what it translates to in fractional inches. It will all be rounded up on the printed product. There is tolerance in the size of the steel being manufactured.
All the construction plans that I have worked from was in feet, inches and fractions.
We converted to decimal and staked it that way.
It is a good thing to measure the steel to verify.
XREF your drawing into another drawing, scale the XREF by 12, set it to architectural units and voila.
Isn't in the back of the field book? That's what I always do, unless I have to calc it and load in a dc
If you are only looking for the nearest 1/8 inch, I do it in my head. Been doing that for close to 30 years now. As the Carpenters use to say, converting the big inches to little inches. That always cracked me up.
There is a wall chart available that helps to get better accuracy. I can't find mine right now. I thought is was still on the wall but it's not.
James
Tell them to get the book: "Smoley's Parallel Tables of Logarithims and Squares".
Gives the Decimal Equivalents in 1/32" increments to four decimal places.
