Subdivision map from 2002 in meters !!!!

[wingding]

This one is a first for me surveying in Calif for 40 years
Why would a surveyor do this ?
Its in Contra Costa county Uninc. What were they thinking... ? Why would the county surveyor allow this ?
..rant mode off

[dharri]

In the early 2000’s there was a big push on in California to convert to metric. In southern California, Caltrans started doing all of their right of way maps in metric. For the most part, all of the private folks ignored the push.

[Edward M Reading]

We have a local city that required that for a few years. It did not go over very well.

[Mr. Smith]

BIA required me to use Metric on all mapping and
even use a metric rod for levels.

Brian

funny all that metric conversion seemed to fade away.

[Anthony Maffia]

It was required in Contra Costa County for a while, following Caltrans' direction. I've found a few in dual units, and a few in metric only.

[Proud7191]

Yep! It was only around long enough to create confusion during implantation. The maps done during this time will create reactions such as Wingdings for years to come. I have no problem with the metric system except a millimeter is to small of a survey unit and centimeter is to big. I would say a hundredth of a foot is perfect. Also if they would have adopted metric street widths and standards, such as 18 meter wide r/w's but instead we would have street widths of 60'/3.28 or 18.288 meter roads:). Or my favorite 203 mm walls. (coming from the 8" wall conversion, which wasn't really 8" when dealing with masonry block which was 7-5/8" ?????). Could you imagine if they would of used the same mindset in converting cars to metric. 5/8" nut would require you to purchase a 15.87 mm wrench? Good day, Jp

[Peter Ehlert]

funny!
I was able to adapt to metric measurement and products in the '90s, the learning curve was not that steep.
More recently I find that people accustomed with working with various measurement systems don't struggle with the math (think about how we figured out chains and feet... just numbers)

[land butcher]

We're going metric - oh, no we're not.

County of Orange required it too - for awhile LOL

Best one I heard was a site that abutted a CA hwy and the CalTrans plan had a 1 for the distance from the back of walk to the CL fence. The fence guys built the fence 1 ft from the walk not 1 meter. CalTrans was upset but all the other plans were in feet. LOL

Even better were the mid 80s GM G bodies. Built in Canada but all the mechanical is standard but all the body is metric. Loads of fun to work on.

[Peter Ehlert]

remember Whitworth?
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/whitworth-tools
http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/whitworth-bolts

[hellsangle]

Sad situation. Why OUR profession, above all others, doesn't embrace the metric system is beyond me!

The dumbest hammer in the toolbox (think contractor. think your fence example) runs the show. CalTrans had the opportunity to lead us to metrification. They failed.

Myanmar (Burma), Liberia and the UNITED STATES are the only countries in the WORLD(!!!) not on the metric system! Are we as backwards as those countries that we can't embraced metrification?!

The children/grandchildren wouldn't have to deal with fractions. Remember that horrible exercise when you had to boil fractions down to common denominator in order to multiply/divide? (Smart way decimalize the fraction then manipulate. But that is too much like the metric system, huh?)

A surveyor that can't work in Metrics would probably be considered incompetent. We deal with metrics all the time with our GPS! It was the surveyor that got away from feet and inches. Not much of a leap to go metric - 'cause our profession was already thinking like that when we went to decimal feet over a century ago!

Every time I wound up "giving" away (because there wasn't $$$s left over for the Record of Survey) - I made my Records of Surveys on my terms 'cause I was paying for it. And those terms were a 100% metric Record of Survey. You'll see some in Sonoma & Marin Counties. (BTW a Hungarian map-checker for the County of Marin absolutely NO PROBLEM checking my metric maps.)

Record of Survey Side Rant: The surveyor gets screwed because of B&P Code, yet he/she has no "standing" with regards to the vested interests in the land being surveyed. In order to be equitable to the surveying profession . . . .1) B&P Code should be changed to remove the County Surveyor from the equation. Surveyor to Recorder. OR 2). An Ordinance (somehow Statewide, but I don't see how that could happen) requiring a "permit" for any boundary surveys. That "permit" would require the recording of a Record of Survey or filing a Corner Record. A building permit would not be issued until one or the other was filed with the County Surveyor's Office. Put the burden where it belongs - with the person requesting a survey!!!

Sorry to "go off" on ya . . . but metrication SHOULD be the standard in our profession. The rest of the United States is more metric than us. Look no further than that TWO LITER bottle of soda! Your American made cars all have metric sized bolts, etc.

I wish CalTrans would "man up" and get back to metrics. Incompetent contractors be damned!

Whew . . . (Got that off my chest.)

Phil - Sonoma

[Peter Ehlert]

Phil you need to let it all out. Holding back is not good for your health.

(I agree 100 1/4 %)

[Gary Schenk]

I can't believe meters would be an issue for a surveyor. It didn't seem to bother any of the grade checkers I knew, not even Rags.

[LS_8750]

Ok, how many meters in a chain? How many millimeters in a link? How many square meters in a section?

No. No. No.

This system is not set up that way.

No.

Mr. Danskin I've seen your maps breaking down a 1/2" iron pipe into inner and outer millimeter dimensions.

No.

I spent two years in the U.K. working with feet and miles but then breaking down pipe diameters in millimeters and measuring flow in liters per second instead of the American gallons per minute.

Don't let anybody fool you. They drive on the wrong side of the road over there. And how we do things here makes much more sense.

[land butcher]

The only reason many, but not all, liquids are in liters was because the govt mandated it, then after the molds were built decided that not enough of America was changing, pipe cos didn't change, lumber didn't change, etc.

As for cars, same thing and because at that time many cars, and a lot of the car parts, were built outside the USA.

Why not promote going to grads instead of degrees - LOL

[Rob_LS]

OK, so am I'm reading: metric is bad, and Caltrans started it, and metric is good, and Caltrans failed or are there other valid permutations?

Imagine for a moment you have a significant project list in front of you - Let's say 20 years of work, and the entire state is relying on you to deliver those projects... And imagine all your clients got 75% (or more) of their funding for the projects you were scheduled to work on for the next 20 years from the only lender in business... And that lender had some input into the specifications for those projects... And that lender said, "we're not funding any projects unless they are done in metric units..."

What units would you use?

And, as expected, Land Butcher says it's the government's fault... Next time we change, I vote for Radians and Cubits...

Remember to double check your conversion factors...

[TTaylor]

The federal government in the late '90s put something like a 10 year time frame on state DOTs to transfer over to metric or federal transportation funds would be withheld. I was on the Caltrans transition team representing Surveys statewide at the time. We created a transition plan and guidance documents. Caltrans took them at their word and immediately began the transition. Not so with most other states. After several years, the states not willing to change got the Feds to change it from mandatory to optional. That did it. I argued that we should still move to metric to no avail.

BTW, I ended up buying a boatload of tape measures (among other things) for Surveys statewide that had millimeters on one side and tenths of the other. I still have mine.

Be careful when converting between metric and feet. In California the law mandates the conversion factor to be US Survey Foot, not the International Survey Foot. The two are almost exactly equal, but it's definition is slightly different: standard (or "international") foot: .3048 meters. U.S. survey foot: 1200/3937 meters. The difference is 2 parts per million, which doesn't sound like much if you are dealing with small measurements. However, it becomes significant when working with state plane coordinates with distance magnitudes in the 2,000,000 range.

PRC:
8810.
  The plane coordinates of a point on the earth’s surface, to be used in expressing the position or location of the point in the appropriate zone of CCS27 or CCS83, shall consist of two distances, expressed in feet and decimals of a foot or meters and decimals of a meter. When the values are expressed in feet, the “U.S. Survey foot,” (one foot = 1200/3937 meters) shall be used as the standard foot for CCS27 and CCS83. One of these distances, to be known as the “East x-coordinate,” shall give the distance east of the Y axis; the other, to be known as the “North y-coordinate,” shall give the distance north of the X axis. The Y axis of any zone shall be parallel with the central meridian of that zone. The X axis of any zone shall be at right angles to the central meridian of that zone.

[Peter Ehlert]

The federal government in the late '90s put something like a 10 year time frame on state DOTs to transfer over to metric or federal transportation funds would be withheld. I was on the Caltrans transition team representing Surveys statewide at the time. We created a transition plan and guidance documents. Caltrans took them at their word and immediately began the transition. Not so with most other states. After several years, the states not willing to change got the Feds to change it from mandatory to optional. That did it. I argued that we should still move to metric to no avail.

BTW, I ended up buying a boatload of tape measures (among other things) for Surveys statewide that had millimeters on one side and tenths of the other. I still have mine.

Be careful when converting between metric and feet. In California the law mandates the conversion factor to be US Survey Foot, not the International Survey Foot. The two are almost exactly equal, but it's definition is slightly different: standard (or "international") foot: .3048 meters. U.S. survey foot: 1200/3937 meters. The difference is 2 parts per million, which doesn't sound like much if you are dealing with small measurements. However, it becomes significant when working with state plane coordinates with distance magnitudes in the 2,000,000 range.

PRC:
8810.
  The plane coordinates of a point on the earth’s surface, to be used in expressing the position or location of the point in the appropriate zone of CCS27 or CCS83, shall consist of two distances, expressed in feet and decimals of a foot or meters and decimals of a meter. When the values are expressed in feet, the “U.S. Survey foot,” (one foot = 1200/3937 meters) shall be used as the standard foot for CCS27 and CCS83. One of these distances, to be known as the “East x-coordinate,” shall give the distance east of the Y axis; the other, to be known as the “North y-coordinate,” shall give the distance north of the X axis. The Y axis of any zone shall be parallel with the central meridian of that zone. The X axis of any zone shall be at right angles to the central meridian of that zone.

Thanks for those history details Tom.
At that time we were contractors for Caltrans. We were told to make measurements in Metric. We bought pocket tapes, rag tapes, and leveling rods. We flipped the switches in the total stations to display Meters. We did ACad in meters.
I don't remember filing any record maps in metric, but I may have.
There was a learning curve. (the terms like Right a Tenth was not the same, but RCH did not change).
Now, decades later, those learned skills are very handy. Here in Baja the contractors, design professionals, and builders have Zero difficulty working with the mix. It is actually Much easier.
Pocket tapes in feet/inches and meters are common here, not so in the US.

It is a darn shame that the US does not communicate well with the rest of the world.

[Anthony Maffia]

Opus gives grid coordinates in metric, and must be converted to sFt but for short distances the ft calc is quicker. The difference is 0.01 foot in 1.5 km.

Cool thing, Trimble field software doesn't care. The fixed height GPS rods are metric, and the short extensions are half meter. Just add a "m" to the end of the measurement and it works seamlessly.

[Gary Schenk]

Next time we change, I vote for Radians and Cubits...

I vote we change to smoots.