Dear all: In Canada, after a brief period of hard conversion, most construction has reverted to soft conversion, simply because of some need for compatibility with the huge US market next door.
Wood studs are mostly soft converted imperial dimensioned - a "2x4" becomes a "39x89". Although most people still call it a two-by-four. "2x6" becomes "39x139". Like in Australia and the UK, and other countries, in Canada all metric drawings are in mm, with no units after the number. Millimetres is assumed. We could always tell when a project had been drawn by a US architect - we would see things like dimensions marked off as; 12.26946285 M , itself obviously a soft conversion from a drawing originally drawn to imperial standards, and converted to a ridiculous number of decimal places . Totally wrong of course - that dimension should be marked as 12 269 . Nothing else. All the best of the season to everyone here. John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Naughtin To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 9:06 AM Subject: [USMA:49271] Re: SI Construction Dear Bruce and All, These references might help. These have errors like no space between number and unit. In the first one the unit, millimetre, is not even mentioned as it is assumed that all dimensions on Australian building sites are always in millimetres (hence no decimals and no vulgar or common fractions). http://www.wespine.com.au/productcat.html http://www.mytradie.com/DIY_Timber_stud_wall.htm On 2010/12/24, at 02:32 , a-bruie...@lycos.com wrote: Well, thanks for the conversion of the mm affair and clearing the air, I do believe this will finally be solved if and when US Government finally Metricates America, and stop pussy footing around. Sorry, the voluntary method is a hundred years running, I do not want to continue to use two incompatible tool systems. Could you please share your thoughts on the basis of your 100 year estimate for the "voluntary method". And could you please explain the "voluntary method" to me as I have observed only four "Approaches to metrication" and I am reasonably sure that only one of these works. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/ApproachesToMetrication.pdf My next question is how does the rest of the world measure the studs? Irritably American still uses 2"x4", the true form is 1.5"x3.5", in the Metric World do you finally use the true dimensions? 38.1 x 88.9 mm, or 40 x 90 mm rounded, what ever dimensions others nations use? Please state sizes. See the first reference above. The most commonly used stud is the 90 mm x 45 mm, which is placed to suit the "building industry module" wall stud spacing of 600 mm. (The 450 mm stud spacings are usually only used to fit in with re-construction work where you are retrofitting an old house which had 457 mm spacing (457 mm = 18 inches assuming 1959 metric inches)). You can generally rely on these timbers to be dimensionally exact and within the millimetre specification. By the way, I still remember – with horror – the packing of wall studs we need to do before kiln-dried and Dressed All Round (DAR) timbers became available. It seemed that you had to pack almost every stud to achieve a flat surface for plaster covering (dry wall I think it is called in the USA). Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
