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Metric and imperial

VanCAD holds every measurement in one canonical form and shows it to you in whichever system you think in. The unit switch decides which that is, for the whole app at once.

The VanCAD unit switch, in the toolbar’s Settings menu: a two-option segmented control reading Metric and Imperial, with Metric selected.

Metric / Imperial

Section titled “Metric / Imperial”

What it is. A two-option switch in the toolbar’s Settings menu, under Units. On a narrow window Settings moves into the More menu and the switch goes with it. Wherever it appears, it is the same setting - including on the demo explorer, where it is a switch on the bar itself, and in the custom-object editor.

What it does. Re-labels every measurement in the app. Lengths read in metres or in feet, weights in kilograms or in pounds, and the fields you type into expect the unit currently on screen - so with imperial selected, typing 6.5 into a size field means six and a half feet. The step sizes on the Move and Resize tools follow too: 10, 50, 100 and 250 mm in metric become 0.5, 2, 4 and 10 inches in imperial, and the chip you had chosen stays chosen.

Options and limits. Two things keep their own units whichever system you pick. Angles are always degrees, and the van’s shelf gap is always millimetres, because it is a fitting clearance of a few centimetres and reads more clearly that way. Money is not a unit in this sense either: the currency your costs are shown in is a separate choice, in the bill of materials.

Small figures promote to a smaller unit where that is easier to read - a weight under a kilogram shows in grams, and under a pound in ounces - but the editable fields never switch unit as you type, so a value cannot change unit under your cursor mid-edit.

What it affects. What you read, what you type, and how far one press of a stepper nudges. The design itself is stored in millimetres and grams whatever you choose, so switching is lossless and switching back returns exactly the numbers you started with. It is not an edit, so it does not appear on the undo stack, and it is not part of your saved design: a design you save in imperial opens in whatever unit the app is showing at the time.

The choice is not remembered between visits - the app starts in metric each time. Its neighbour in the Settings menu, light and dark, behaves the opposite way: that one is remembered.

Section titled “Related”