CompuServe Messages

Units + Tempo= Wierdness

    07-Oct-94 02:05:10
Sb: Units + Tempo= Wierdness
Fm: DONALD NEWLANDS 73170,3216
To: Yost Group
Most of the work we do is in decimal feet. Because of this, most of the time, I don't bother to set Units — decimal feet look just like the (default) decimal inches on the status line, so why bother. Besides, coming from a background in AutoCAD, a unit is a unit, whether you call it a foot or an inch is not a big deal. Never did I have so much as a single misaligned Merge (well, maybe one) until I had set the tracks for the three-hundredth object in our first big project using Tempo… For Tempo to properly read the velocity of objects in MPH, it was necessary to set units from inches to decimal FEET before running the IPAS. However, woe was I when I tried to merge that file into the master scene! JUMBO! Okay, so I set my units in the master to feet, merge the file and it worked. But later, stranger things started happening: things came in at a new micro, micro scale, things came across at a strange "middle" scale… Boy! It has been getting really confusing to track all these scales! A unit in AutoCAD is still a unit, no matter what you call it. But lately, my 3D Studio files have been self scaling their units during merges. My roadways that are twelve units wide become 240 units when I merge them in with Units set to feet…. I WANT TO GO BACK TO A WORLD WHERE: ONE= ONE UNIT! !!!HELP!!! Where did I go wrong? Do tracks embedded with Tempo carry scale info? Has 3D Studio always done this? Or, did I just get 0.082666 times smaller (0.0825 in 3DS)? Donald Newlands