At 06:42 AM 12/1/2011, Harold Hallikainen wrote: >Speaking of screw sizes... Since we sell our products internationally, >I've been suggesting moving away from US hardware and towards metric. So >far no one agrees. We really do get stuck on measurement systems. When I >was a kid, my father gave me a job at his company. My first job was >sorting screws that had gotten mixed together. He said "I have engineers >that don't know screw sizes." He wanted to make sure I wasn't one of them. >But, I still don't know metric screw sizes. I'm in the same boat - I can sort North American screws by eye but=20 get lost when looking at Metric hardware. >Speaking of measurements, how many are designing circuit boards using mm, >and how many using mils (thousanths of inch)? Imperial units for all of the initial layout / placements. I use=20 Metric dimensions only when creating footprints that are in Metric. My CAD package (Cadint) switches seamlessly between Imperial and=20 Metric just by tapping the "U" key (Units) on the keyboard but I do=20 most all of my initial placements and routing in Cadint's older=20 sibling: EE Designer II. Then I import into Cadint for any finicky=20 stuff and for Gerber file generation. My preferred grid spacing is 0.025" or octave increments above, at=20 least when I'm first plopping footprints onto the board. It bugs the=20 hell out of me when one of my co-workers places stuff a few mils off=20 the 25 mil grid for no good reason - it makes the board look 'sloppy'=20 to my eye as well as being harder to route 'neatly'. dwayne --=20 Dwayne Reid Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .