Unit Types

Paragon enables unit types to be set up which will then be linked to relevant attributes of the various elements which appear throughout the AVEVA E3D Design databases. The most common units (the default units) are millimetres, inches or feet and inches, which are usually assigned to bore and distance attributes. These units currently apply to all AVEVA E3D Design modules except Propcon.

You may also define other units with conversion factors to relate one set of units to another; unit definitions can be collected together into sets to be used for different purposes.

Information controlling units is held in a UNIT element of the Catalog Database (DB). The UNITS hierarchy is shown below:

The elements of the UNITS hierarchy are as follows:

• UNIT
  The UNIT element is the top-level element of the hierarchy. It has three special attributes: BUNI, DUNI and DFUN. BUNI and DUNI can be set to determine the default Bore and Distance units, respectively. They are set to any of MM, INCH, MIL or FINC (for feet and inches). A typical sequence of setup commands would be:

  NEW UNIT

  BUNI INCH

  DUNI FINC

  This would mean that, by default, all bore values are interpreted as inches and all distance values, for example, HEIGHT, DISTANCE, as feet and inches. Each AVEVA E3D Design module has its default units initialized at run time to those defined in the first UNIT element of the first Catalog DB in the Multiple Database (MDB) being used. BUNI and DUNI may also be set to NULL.

  The value of the BUNI and DUNI are used for setting BORE and DISTANCE current working units. The BUNI value is applied to current BORE units (one of MM, INCH or FINCH) and the DUNI value is the current DISTANCE unit (any distance standard unit including MM, INCH or FINCH).

  The setting of DUNI also determines which of imperial or metric units are to be generally used.

  Some physical quantities will be initialized to use their database unit regardless of imperial or metric DUNI settings (for example, angles, voltages, current, time, power).

  The current working units of most other quantities are directly dependent on (for example, DERIVED from) the setting of the current distance unit (and sometimes current units of other quantities. For example Area, Volume, Surface and Linear Density, Content, Temperature gradient.

  Some quantities have special initial imperial or metric settings applied.

  • Mass will be kg or lb

  • Temperature will be degC or degF

  • Pressure will be pascal or PSI

  • Force will be newton or lbf

  • Density will be kg/m3 or lb/ft3

  • Unit mass will be kg/distance or lb/distance