I work primarily in imperial units. With calipers and DRO displays it is easy to work with decimal inches. The exception is my 12¡± rule, which is graduated in 1/32¡± and 1/64¡± on one side, and mm and half-mm on the other. The 1/32¡± graduations are hard to read and the 1/64¡± scale is just a grey blur, so I often turn to the metric side. Mm and half-mm are easier to read and entirely sufficient.
Like Mac says, every stick is milled on all surfaces anyway, so there is no particular advantage to using one system of units over the other. Hardware is a different story, as here in the USA hinges, latches, screws, etc are most often sized to imperial dimensions.
As a side note, the US government made a big push for metric measurements years ago. The Federal Highway Administration required all construction plans and specifications to be in metric units. I designed a large bridge rehabilitation project, and had to convert the measurements from the old plans from imperial to metric for the rehab project. 10 years later I designed a follow-on project on that same bridge, but by this time FHWA had given up on metric and I had to convert my previous drawings from metric back to imperial. Both times the conversion was a pain in the neck.
Thinking in metric lengths was easy to pick up. I never did get comfortable with metric forces or pressures.
--
John Hinman
Boise ID
K700S and A941
