I am designing in inches and cannot see how to define a radius in 1/128th inch increments. 1/128th inch is almost exactly 0.2 mm, which is the resolution of my printer. The radius pop-up box only allows denominators up to 64. When I zoom way in and drag a radius out or in, the radius seems to grow and shrink in 1/256 inch increments but the measure shown is never finer grained than 1/64th inch. Is there some workaround? Did I miss a setting somewhere?
Many thanks.
I’m pretty sure that you can toggle back-and-forth between millimeters and inches and it doesn’t change the dimensions of what you’re making. So let’s say you build your initial object in inches and then you transform into millimeters and set the radius and then transform it back into inches, I think you might get what you’re looking for. I was doing this on one of my first projects and it seem to work.
I hate to be “that guy” but can you just switch everything to metric? Life is Soooo… much easier that way. Fractional math is far more difficult and error prone, and as you’ve already discovered, even entering fractions in the first place is a PITA.
I’m an amateur woodworker, and even though most lumber (in the USA anyway) is mostly available in Standard Imperial measurements, it is still much easier design in metric. You’d be surprised how quickly you can learn to visualize in mm/cm instead of inches/feet. And I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll make less errors when you don’t have to add/subtract/multiply or divide fractions.
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Shasti and Steve - thanks for your good suggestions. I learned a few more things about Shapr3d from you, which is always fun.
To Shasti’s point: I tested the toggle and it does not change dimensions, as you thought to be the case. So to make a circle with a radius that is 1/128th more than 1/8th I can change the view to millimeters and add 0.2 mm to the radius. When done this still shows 1/8th as the radius in Fractional view but shows 0.133 inches in Decimal. Not as easy as selecting a denominator of 128 from the pop-up, but it works. Even easier - I could switch to the Decimal inches view and add .008 to the radius. (approx 1/128th) I had not thought of that until reading your comment.
To Steve’s point: metric would be much simpler but my parts have to accommodate client components measured in Imperial units (1/4" bolts, 1" OD tubing, etc.) with a wee bit of margin for error. I could still do all the design in metric and no one would be the wiser (the slicer uses millimeters) but I’d be forever doing the numbers in my head during design.
So I think in the near term when I need a 1/128th margin I should just change to Decimal inches and add 8/1000ths. Problem solved until there’s a 128 option for fractional denominators.
Thanks again for your comments, and stay healthy. MUCH APPRECIATED
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