Originally Posted by
answer=42
The article quotes tolerances in "hundreths of an inch". Can Boeing really still be working in Imperial units for the 787? Or is this a journo 'explanation'?
For linear measurements, it doesn't really matter all that much, since an inch is
exactly 25.4 mm.
So for people who have worked all their life with inches, feet and yards, it's easier to visualise 0.04 in, than for me who's always worked with metric, and who had to convert that 0.04 in to 1 mm before it meant something.
Concorde was built using both imperial and metric, and it never really caused any problems. I wouldn't be amazed if most of the Airbus UK workshops (AB wings are nearly all built in the UK) were still using imperial measurements as well.
It's weights and volumes where imperial measurements make less sense to me, because there are no 'clean' conversion factors, and more opportunities for stupid mistaeks.
Ask the pilots of the "Gimli glider", or the Mars probe, that went "splat".
CJ