> When you're working down to something tiny, both measurement systems will be able to represent absolute distances just fine - do we agree on that? Yes. I gue

> When you're working down to something tiny, both measurement systems will be able to represent absolute distances just fine - do we agree on that? Yes. I guess it was implied by omission but I don't think either system is bad. My original statement was: "I wouldn't call imperial measures 'broken'" > Can I ask why you consider consider 0.5 inches to be 'one unit' - but think 1.5 cm is not? >1/16th of an inch isn't just technically a division of an inch. : ) Because I don't think of 1.5 inches as 1 inch + 0.5 inches, I tend to think of 1.5 inches instead as three 1/2-inches. What I mean by stating that while 1/16 is (and 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 are) "technically" divisions of the inch, they are _practically_ (or effectively) separate whole units that you step up or down to the same way you convert up or down between mm and cm. I find sub-dividing material (or design) by a power of two to be very common. Working with metric units, this tends to always lead to handling multiples of 5 which I tend to find more difficult than handling multiples of 2. Working with imperial inches and subdivisions of an inch in this way (for "normal" sized projects of the type mentioned in previous comments) means there are more options to match "whole" units to the specific measurement and you generally make new measurements in your work by changing units and adding/subtracting integer values of that unit. It is literally practical because it was derived from existing practices and matches them inherently.