Architectural-type dimensions are tricky...especially with stacked fractions...from a graphics standpoint. Some word-processing programs use super-script and subscript -- if they can handle stacked fractions at-all -- and others use superscript and small-caps with varying degrees of success. Graphics programs are even more glitchy... One of the 'burp's in Sketch-Up is when using SU or Layout's internal dimensioning-tool you can occasionally get a dimension where the "zero-inches" is omitted and instead of [ 17'-0 1/2" ] you get [ 17'-1/2" ]...which can be confused for [17'-1 1/2" ] by a less knowledgeable reader.
I've been looking for a used sailboat and talking and chatting with yards and sailmakers on what's available and "how much". For some truly-perverse reason, some boat-builders, sailmakers and riggers use
feet-and-decimal inches. [ 6'-3 5/8" ] => [ 6'-3.675" ] I don't know if this is a hold-over from the
Age of Steam and Rivets, or maybe an older British or maybe New England engineering practice that survived in the boat-building industry.
Datacad supports feet-and-decimal inches, so it's obviously still used in some industries....but I've not run into it being used before.The Brits and the Europeans still use 1st-Angle Projection, while we use 3rd-Angle Projection for technical drafting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiview ... rojectionsI've tried to wrap my brain around 1st-Angle Projection for decades, but I just get a headache...
One of the first monumental tasks for Packard to built the British Merlin aircraft-engines was to completely redraft the Rolls-Royce blueprints into US-typical 3rd-Angle Projection so the production engineers could understand what they were looking at. I don't know if they converted the Whitworth and BNC/BNF fasteners and threads from to American SAE for US-built Packard-Merlin production. Before Metrication, the British auto industry was using machine-tools, fasteners and threads from SIX different systems intermixed on the same car; Whitworth, British National Fine, British Standard Cycle, British Association Screw Thread (a quasi-Metric thread), Metric and SAE. ...Any wonder why British Leland went under?? We only struggle with SAE or Metric.
Except for Land Surveyors who contend with "survey feet" of several slightly different length.....Bwahhahhahahhaha!