topic Re: How to set units? in Fusion Electronics Forum

How to set units?

AntonGabrie — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 03:31:29 GMT

Hi,

I have been an Eagle user for a while and one of the things that frustrated me the most is that there was no option to change the units from mils to mm in the whole program. When I saw the new Electronics Design area of Fusion 360 I thought this would have been solved because units are changed globally in Fusion with ease., but that is not the case. Am I missing something or is there really no easy way of switching measurement systems(for EVERYTHING)?

Best Regards

Anton G.

Re: How to set units?

D-NGK — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 04:14:27 GMT

Do the "Grid" settings not work for you?

If you change the size of the Grid to mm, FE will show all coordinates and dimensions in "mm"

Re: How to set units?

AntonGabrie — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 04:35:21 GMT

Thanks for your suggestion, but no. That only changes the units used in the grid and positional values. Take a look at these screenshots. The change is not global, which would make so much more sense. Altium Designer, Solidworks, Fritzing, Fusion 360 3D modeling environment, and many other programs work this way, but for some reason, Eagle, and apparently Fusion 360 Electronics also makes this confusing.

Re: How to set units?

jorge_garcia — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 21:19:32 GMT

Hello @AntonGabrie,

The Grid settings set the units globally, BUT Fusion Electronics displays the value in whatever units yields the lowest number of decimal places by default. It's an aesthetic feature so that the numbers in general look simpler. With that said this can be disabled, try this:

SET Interface.PreferredUnit x;

Where x is:
0 default, chooses units that yields lowest number of decimal places
1 imperial units
2 metric units

See HELP SET for all of the options available to the set command.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Re: How to set units?

bjomag — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 16:05:12 GMT

Thank you for a very helpful answer to a question I have been wondering for a while.

Is there any way to check the current setting of this setting?

I also tried HELP SET but nothing happened? You are supposed to do ctrl+L or just write in the command line, correct?

Thank you for an awesome product!

/Björn

Re: How to set units?

jorge_garcia — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 17:46:18 GMT

Hello @bjomag,

There's no way to query the current setting but if you don't like the one you are on then you can change it to whatever you want it to be.

The HELP SET was just my EAGLE knowledge coming through, I thought it would work in Electronics but it looks like it doesn't. My mistake I shouldn't have assumed that.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Re: How to set units?

nick7LNK4 — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 07:49:48 GMT

Hello Jorge,

I hope you are well. Just found this thread as I have been getting frustrated with this for some time now. Every time I go to create a new component I have to change the Grid from mills to mm manually. It would be good to have an option to chose your default option and have it remember that at least for any given project.

I tried the SET Interface.PreferredUnit x as suggested but this did nothing. Is this being addressed or is there another work around please?

Thanks

Re: How to set units?

nadovich — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 17:09:12 GMT

I've never heard a missing capability described as an "aesthetic feature". That's a new one on me. I'll have to use that someday. Thanks.

Re: How to set units?

jorge_garcia — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:08:11 GMT

Hi @nick7LNK4,

Now you can go into the preferences in Fusion 360 and set what you want the default units to be.

Best Regards,

Re: How to set units?

nadovich — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 13:35:01 GMT

Well, since you bring it up, it's not at all obvious where these unit
"Preferences" might be set when one is working on a PCB layout in Fusion
Electronics.

Re: How to set units?

jorge_garcia — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 21:55:35 GMT

Hi @nadovich ,

I hope you're doing well. Click on your picture on the top right of the Fusion 360 screen and then go to Preferences. Once you are in preferences go to the Electronics subsection.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do or you.

Best Regards,

Re: How to set units?

nadovich — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 23:48:01 GMT

I find a way to set the default units for future designs. Does that work
for the current design?