Hi there,
I am working for a client and the model space is in Meters, but I need to measure Distance in Yds.
When I try to choose the units, I don’t see any Yd
Is this on purpose? Is there a way to measure in yards without changing model units?
Jeremy
Hi @jdelavaulx
There isn’t a vanilla way since they don’t expose the yards option at the command line.
But here is a script that will let you measure in both yards and meters and reports both on the command line. I commented out the 4 decimal display precision and let it default to what you have set in options instead, don’t mind the reference to cubits I sometimes work in odd measurement systems.
Copy and paste the text file to an icon.
MeasureInMeters&Yards.txt (1.0 KB)
RM
Hi Jeremy -
I’m perpetually confused when it comes to imperial units…
How does changing model units help measuring things in yards?
As far as I can tell, even if I start a new document from an inches or feet template, there is no yards in the available units. And we don’t have templates in a yards unit?
At any rate, I’ve thrown the request on the heap:
RH-92370 Distance: Add Yards
-wim
Hi Wim
I can’t speak for the op why he wants yards but Rhino should be able to use all its unit systems in the measurements tab without having to change the options, like it currently lets us measure in metric in an inch template.
All these strange unit systems are not for manufacturing things because for that metric is fine they are to facilitate designing things. Because each system is cultural, thankfully the clothing industry still respects this in a minor way, because each culture has its standard sizes. Even ceramic design lets say the handles on mugs will be different in different cultures. Like Chinese handles might be too small for larger western male hands some of the time, we can’t get our fat fingers comfortably in them. Or ladies China that’s dainty made for women.
Then there’s the whole world of creating classical architecture and traditional architecture from plans where the measurements are shown in the old unit systems, like modules, cubits and traditional Chinese and Japanese systems. Converting these to metric and checking accuracy is a nightmare.
I’m thankful that Rhino has custom units and have used them in many ways, however an old wish of mine is for a sub-unit option in custom units i.e divisions of the custom unit. Like modules with a sub unit of minutes not just decimal divisions of the custom unit. This way I could have my modules divided into 60 minutes or whatever the author demands.
RM
Beautifully written! I think that you make some very good points here, and I fully agree with you. Personally, I am working on measuring golf courses, and whilst the company strictly works in model units of metres, many golf courses around the world use yards.
In many different ways, over the 7 1/2 years that I’ve used Rhino/gh, I have always found that it is wonderful at being able to do things in customisable ways. If you can think of doing something, it’s either able to be done, or you can use a custom script to easily make it doable.
To me, it is only logical that you should be able to measure in any possible unit, and there are many many out there. All it takes is the understanding of what unit document is being used, and a robust conversion table to a high level of precision, that can give you an output. I’m currently developing a small python script using, which aims to achieve this, and I might post it here a bit later today.
I digress, fundamentally, Rhino would benefit from having all of these units and also custom units available for measurement.
Jeremy
It would be dead easy with a script to convert from the current file units to feet, then simply divide the result by 3 and output the result which will be yards.
You can convert the current units directly to yards - Yards is included in the Rhino units, just not in the Distance command.
Here’s a Rhino 8 plugin that adds a command Yards which gives you the distance between two points in Yards.
Yards.rhp (25.5 KB)
I did provide a VB script that shows both meters and yards in the command line when using the distance command, perhaps it escaped your attention.
I feel and wish that any units that are exposed in scripting should be chose able at the command line for all the various measuring tools in Rhino not just distance. It’s nice that McNeel already included what they have currently but they should go the extra Yard (pun intended) and make all the measure options they have available in scripting accessible at the command line and for all the tools like volume and area as well for custom units.
And lastly I can’t stress this enough I need sub units in custom units as I stated above. I’m working on classical architecture in modules divided into 60 or other sub units called minutes. I’m also working on Asian architecture based on classical Asian texts. I realize that this is likely meaningless to most people and therefore who has need for the meaningless, but for me it is a fruitful avenue I have been pursuing over the years. Having this one option would allow me to present my findings in a meaningful manner to the public in Rhino tutorials which I want to publish along with my text.
RM
Hi Roland -
That’s what I’m trying to understand. I don’t see which options I need to change to be able to measure in yards. I’m not questioning the need that some users might have to use that unit.
I can easily measure in inches in a metric template.
Thanks. That was the part that I was missing.
I’ve updated the YT accordingly.
→ RH-92370 Distance: Add All Model Units
-wim
Thanks Wim
RM
Perhaps, the ability to have day 3 different custom units available, and a very quick way to change between them, could be useful for cases such as RM? for example, holding down a modifier key could read out the distance in a sub unit (custom unit 2), and without the modifier, it shows custom unit 1.
It could potentially also be useful to have the option to show a live print display of the measured distance near the cursor before the user makes the second click.
Jeremy
Hi Dan,
Can this please be included in Rhino 8 as well?
Best,
Jeremy
Hi @jdelavaulx
Yes that would be very nice to have and would be a great workaround for adding subunits in custom units. This way myself and my students could measure in either modules or the subunit of minutes. Also it would be great if we could use custom prefixes to draw in custom units. Like now we can enter 1m in a foot or other templates and it reads as meters if we could do that with custom units by defining a prefix like Mod for modules or a special character McNeel agrees on that would be awesome for my work.
RM