System Units for large structures

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to build a large mansion (Size: 80m, 300m, 50m), but because it's very large, I find it very difficult to do it. Do You guys change system units when You build large structures?

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

You should always set your System Units appropriately in every new scene. What units you choose is scene dependent.
For a building that size - assuming you're not modeling 100 Acres of land around it as well... - Meters would not allow sufficient detail, mm would make the dimensions too big (max doesn't like big or small numbers), cm might work, decimeters also might work (1 unit =10cm). up to you really, but stay away from the extremes. Whatever you choose, make sure you make the model to scale - lots of things in Max depend on it and won't give reliable results if you're way off with the dimensions.

[Anonymous]

I might go with Feet with decimal inches for that particular kind of modeling.  That should allow for smaller details, while still giving you large enough measurements to accurately scale walls and room layouts.  Up to you, but Meters would be too large, as mentioned, and I think mm or cm might be too small.  I don't know of many rooms measured in mm, although you can do the math to convert feet to mm pretty easily.  All depends on what you are modeling, and how accurate you need your grid snaps.

[Steve_Curley]

System Units, not Display Units - the System Units would be Feet in that case, with the Display Units Feet w/decimal inches. I find that the default Inches are uncomfortable work with - Zooming is slightly erratic, viewport clips all the time when in close - I change the defaults to cm (generic units for Display to get rid of the annoying suffix everywhere) right after installation (good old Maxstart.max) and only ever change them if the scene requires it - which this scene would. Even though I still think in Imperial, Max just seems happier with Metric (for most things).