The Metric "Standard"

[govarney]

Gidday all,

I started playing around with the Woodturner Pro software again and I get frustrated with its metric support. Yes, it does support metric but only by converting the imperial measurement. This means, for example, there are a lot of 12.7mm and 76.2mm type values, these being the conversion from 1/2" and 3", and not our 12mm and 70mm, being some of our milled standards in Australia.

This started me thinking, What is the milled standard of timber in other metric countries. Are we in Australia using the world wide standard for timber. Is there a world wide standard for timber.

In Australia, some standards are

19 x 42
35 x 70
45 x 90
1200 x 2400

but these are really close approximations of imperial measures.

Does anyone know what is used in other metric countries, eg France, Germany, New Zealand etc

[thefixer]

With the expansion and contraction of timber due to temperature and humidity, why would you bother worrying about 0.2s and 0.3s of a millimetre anyway? You can cut and measure a piece today and tomorrow it will be a different size.

Cheers
Shorty

[ian]

But does the software support 64ths?

if it does
6mm is 15/64, near as makes no difference
10mm is 25/64
12 is 15/32
19 is 3/4
35 is 1in 3/8
42 is 1in 21/32
45 is 1in 49/64
70 is 2in 3/4
90 is 3in 35/64

The fractions are a bit of a pain to enter, but when converted to metric you end up with what is near enough to whole mm



ian

[joe greiner]

The software may, or may not, support fractional input as an undocumented feature from the command line. AutoCAD LT does support integer fractions, and there are heaps of workarounds, such as 65/240 to represent 3.25" as feet (0.270833333'). Try some experiments. For metric, use 10 x value / 254, or similar dodges.

Joe

[Ad de Crom]

Take a look to www.progecad.com (http://www.progecad.com)
It's the same as autocad, only this is for free to download, for only use.

Ad

[Sturdee]

Does anyone know what is used in other metric countries, eg France, Germany, New Zealand etc

When I left Holland 50 years ago the standard measurement unit for distance was the metre and subdivided into centimetres, which was again subdivided into millimetres.

So the standard 4* 2" which we now call 100 * 50mm they would describe as 10 * 5. Similarly timber was bought in metre and 1/2 metre lenghts.

Peter.