Units in ImPLANT-I​.exe

MicroStation works internally in terms of position units (also known as units of resolution), but also displays master units and sub-units (also known as working units). PDMS and Review work internally in millimetres, but can interact with the user in many other units.

In order to successfully translate a DGN file for PDMS or Review it is necessary to convert the units in the DGN file into millimetres. The DGN file contains two-letter abbreviations of the names of the master unit and the sub-unit, but these abbreviations are not standardized, and so the translation is not automatic.

To display the ISFF unit information from a file, use the Q UNITS command. For example, if the file you are working on is called example.dgn you should type:

Q UNITS /example.dgn

This will produce a message like:

Master Units : ME

Sub-Units : MM

Resolution:

1000 : MM per ME

80 : Pos Units Per MM

Global Origin : 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000

In this case, the MicroStation user has chosen to use metres as the master unit, millimetres as the sub-unit, and has one eightieth of a millimetre as the position unit.

The recommended way to set the units is with the UNITS command. If the master unit is one of METRE (or METER), CM, MM, YARD, FOOT or INCH you should use that keyword. In this case you would type:

UNITS METRE

If the master unit is not one of these, you should supply the length of a master unit in millimetres. In this case you could type:

UNITS 1000

as a metre is one thousand millimetres, but UNITS METRE is recommended.