We often work on sites where we are staking both sitework in US Survey Ft and FT-IN on inside the proposed building. I love that in TBC you can have alternate units, but is there a way to express the alternate units as FT-IN vs only Inch? It seems like you should be able to. My biggest use case is using the measure tool to check layout dimensions inside the building. It would just be much better to not have to run the numbers at every “Measure Distance” Check. Thanks!
You could potential use smart text as a work around in some cases. I use this to check architectural drawings.
@Plheureux I will try to give that a shot. I looked in the current help and fi is no longer listed. You said they corrected that recently for fi to work as an alternate unit? You would think that if it was in the code to use the alternate unit within smartext it is maybe just an oversight to be able to utilize it at the project settings level? The “Measure Distance” is such a great way for quick checks while working without having to go into dimension. @alan.sharp do you think that is an oversight, or just something they don’t have worked out on the project settings level? Thanks!
Hard to say if it is an oversight or not - everything is about priorities and it likely was not a high priority vs other things so it never got implemented or implemented fully - it is always quite the trick to see all the areas that need to be adjusted in the product when you add a function - often the Product Manager is totally locked in on a specific request and how to solve that one issue and they don’t take a step back to see the whole picture - or when they do visualize the whole picture the specific request gets lost in a mass change need that becomes so big it doesn’t get done because it is so much work and no-one can justify the work in terms of a financial return when put up against other needs
All software products are affected by this - some do some things better than others, some do things that others cannot do at all, sometimes a process may take 6 steps when it should be done in one etc etc. and when you do something the first time, you solve a lot of issues and get a solution but that solution can normally be optimized or further rationalized with a second or third pass - the real question is always how many people really need this and is it going to generate more users / sales / better results if we do X vs Y. Nothing is guaranteed in life and you have to pick your battles with the available resources and do the best you can for the user community (existing and new / future).
Hope this explains - no excuses just the reality of writing software - it is not like hardware where you get one shot and if you get it wrong you basically have to start over unless the fix is firmware / software. In Software just about anything is possible (why I love it so much) but it always costs money to build / teak / adjust, cajole … and you have to have people that want to buy it because of what it does to justify developing anything.
It is always a gamble - which horse do I back this month / quarter / year
Alan
Totally understand. Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I just though it was worth a mention in case it was an easy adjustment / refinement at some point. I will have to look to see if there is a possibility to accomplish this with smart text and dimensions.
At some point we will likely write a measure tool or a QA Tool for checking and labeling things as a QA process, I will make sure that we can do Feet and Inches and Fractions in that process when we get there.
Alan
That would be great and I’m sure helpful to many users. RPS tools always take the functionality to the next level anyway! Thanks Alan.
We try for sure and thanks for the vote of confidence
We hear you for sure
Alan
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