January 30, 2005
Tips
Setting Preferred Units
AFT’s system modeling software supports a wide range of English and ISO units for input and output parameters. The following describes how you set unit preferences in AFT Fathom, but is applicable to all AFT software.
Until you set unit preferences, you’ll the default units. These are what appear in the various input and output fields. You can change input units by clicking the arrow button next to the field which will open a list of available units from which you may choose. Output units may be changed ‘on the fly’ either from within the Output Window by double clicking an output column header, or opening Output Control (from the Analysis menu, the toolbar button or double clicking on Output Control on the status bar at the bottom of the main AFT Fathom window). With Output Control open, simply select a unit by clicking on it then select the unit from the drop down list below the output parameter list.
Unit preferences let you change the default parameter units for both input and output. From the Options menu, open Parameter & Unit Preferences, then click the Unit Preferences tab. A list of all unit types appears on the left. Selecting any unit type will display on the right a list of the units available. By default all of the units will be checked, indicating they will all be available from the various drop down lists they appear on. To limit which units appear on drop down lists, simply un-check those you wish to not appear. To set which unit appears by the default, select it and click ‘Set as Preferred Unit’.
So far the changes described above affect the currently open model only. To have these unit preferences apply whenever you begin a new model, click the ‘Set as Default’ button. A message will appear reminding that this will over write any previously saved defaults. To return to the defaults after having modified them, simply open Unit Preferences and click the ‘User Default’ button to recall the last set saved using ‘Set as Default’. You can always change your defaults by re-specifying your preferences and saving them with the ‘Set as Default’ button. To return to the built-in AFT Fathom default settings at any time, simply click ‘Fathom Default’.
