Modeling in Metric Milimeters, choosing a unit of measure

[majikstan]

Hello, I am from Australia and I am used to both at home and through work, in working with milimeters in every case, whether it be engineering, archictecture furniture designing or anything and work wil Milimeters all the time, I noted in Blender that you have 3 choises of unit measure systems such as blender default, metric and imperial, however there is no way to pick milimeters and the programs default displays meters, I know there is a scale value for your scene but it still compares the measure much like the imperial way of listing measures, so with metric se it will define meters, cm then millimeters, example you have a desk top that is 2400x1800mm blender will display 2400mm = 2m, 40cm or a gable end that could be 750mm wide, Blender would display as 70cm, 50mm

I have read on many other forums that have spoken in regards of metric measures and the the reply s usually are that Blender is not a cad program, but then neither was 3ds max or truespace, yet they have a way to set your measure to millimeters, cms, meters, kilometers in the metric etc or inches, feet and others in the imperial etc.
Now you can type in the dimensions and add the mm to the end but once you hit enter they convert to meters, cms, millimeters etc.

Another example 1355mm blender would display as 1m, 30cm, 55mm.
In another instance one person even suggested to someone to just use blender units and treat them as if they were the measure you wanted. but would thatr effect your photo realistic lighting setups and cameras!

So my question is is ther a way to setup milimeters as the actual measure and not divided up? or is this better as an extra future add-on or feature, it is important for me and is still one of the things thats stoping me from adopting blender as much yet.

[RickyBlender]

could help

http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/metric-imperial-units.php

if you set scale to 0.001 in metric
in N panel you can enter numbers and it will be in mm

but you have to set overall dim for you object then afterward add bevel
to get right dimensions

you can even set the grid to show mm

you can see a rectangle 1 mm X 10 mm
but the N panel wont show it in mm
but the min unit which happen here in cm
but when you enter numbers it will be as mm by default
cause of the scene scale = 0.001

note to see the grid you must set the viewport at angle
cannot be seen from top view !

now there is also a Special built you can buy which have CAD features
did you see it ?

happy bl

[IkariShinji (Thies Schulz-Holland)]

… I know there is a scale value for your scene but it still compares the measure much like the imperial way of listing measures, so with metric se it will define meters, cm then millimeters, example you have a desk top that is 2400x1800mm blender will display 2400mm = 2m, 40cm or a gable end that could be 750mm wide, Blender would display as 70cm, 50mm. Another example 1355mm blender would display as 1m, 30cm, 55mm.

This happens because you still have “Separate Units” enabled:

[ShiroAisu]

In another instance one person even suggested to someone to just use blender units and treat them as if they were the measure you wanted. but would thatr effect your photo realistic lighting setups and cameras!

I was actually going to sugest that. It’s all relative as you know. I don’t think size affects lighting, but it does affect accelerations and speeds if you’re planning to animate. Also, if you need to export your model to an engine you would be wise to convert it to the same unit system as the engine.

You can just treat units as millimeters, and after you’re done you just scale it.

This will work for every unit of measure: feet, inches, dm, potatos… Just keep in mind that if you want to work with blenders animation suit (namely with physics simulations), you’ll have to know the conversion between your unit of choice and meters (because gravity).

On feet and want to go to meters? Scale by 0.3048
On inches and want to go to meters? Scale by 0.0254
On decimeters and want to go to meters? Scale by 0.1
On potatos and want to go to meters? Scale by 3

CAD software has measures because it actually needs to record measures, and they have to be recorded in a standardized fashion, while dimensions in a 3d software are all relative until we pair them with other values.

[RickyBlender]

light is made for normal size if you make it way bigger you need to re adjust light intensity !

happy bl

[Nein01]

This happens because you still have “Separate Units” enabled

Even with separate units unchecked, Blender will still convert an input of “352mm” to “35.2cm”

Messing with the scale setting also doesn’t change what’s displayed in the properties (N) panel, and therefore has no effect on the information stored in an exported STL file for example.

It would be nice if we had a way to force all dimensions to be displayed in a specified unit, particularly because many 3D printing websites assume different units of measurement for your uploads.

I recently uploaded to one website that only assumed millimeters, so I had to go and blow up my 35cm tall object to 350 meters tall inside of blender so that it would register as the correct size for printing.

Other websites like shapeways give you a choice when uploading, but even with them you’re still limited to choose only between meters, mm, or inches. That means for the same 35cm object I just mentioned above, I’d have to go back into Blender and remember to switch the unit setting from ‘metric’ to ‘none’ before exporting so that my object’s height would read as simply “0.350” and then I could choose meters when asked by shapeways.

This certainly isn’t the most inconvenient issue in the world, but it does seem like implementing a way for us to force a universal unit of measurement in our projects would be a relatively simple task for someone who knows how to program.