units and resolution

this may help: https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/microstation__wiki/8933/working-units-faq

Hello Anthony,

In addition to the Wiki page posted by Timothy, I'll add a little information that I figured out recently.

Yesterday I fired up ProStructures for the first time and I noticed a different setting compared to OpenBuildings Designer (OBD). The value of 1000 per mm (or 1 000 000 per meter) as you indicate is the default value in OBD, the reason is because "OBD deals with highly graphical elements as per requirement for architectural workflow" according to the information I received from Support. ProStructures uses a default of 10 per mm (or 10 000 per meter), with it's delivered configuration.

So it might be that the seed file you work with in your organization somehow originated from OBD (or another application that uses higher UOR). Or maybe there was another reason why it was changed. 

The ratio between feet and meters seems to be pretty straightforward since 1 foot = 0.3048 meter.

Perhaps the following may also help understand:

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/learning-bentley-microstation-v8i/understanding-units-and-design-file-settings?autoplay=true

1 foot is about .3048 meters so they may use the values in case they have to change the resolution settings between ft and m.

It's because most elements are stored in UORs. Those values make it more logical when going from metric to English, or vise versa.

Depending on what discipline you work in, you want to get your brain around the units stuff. For example a foot is not a foot, it's either international or US Survey. Only really maters for large areas. The 1" bit is even more fun. We in North America are supposed to be getting new geographic systems. Rumored they will eliminate the Survey Foot, which will be better, but many of us will still be dealing with old project data forever.