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I am trying to create an 11x14" plane and would like to snap circles onto it in 1/4" spacing. I change the grid to inches and imperial and the scale automatically changes to .0254, which apparently reflects that 1 inch is .0254 meters. Not sure I understand why inches scale is reflected in meters, but I would like have a snap grid for 1/4" increments. The blender grid does not seem to change at all regardless to the scale setting. Zooming in or out does not change the grid lines. Does this work in Blender? If so, can anyone explain how to create a grid that would work for 1/4" increments?

Should I be using meters and converting inches?

NCFatBoy
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  • I don't really get where scale automatically changes to 0.254.. Once you change scene scale to Imperial one unit of the grid will be 1 feet by default, like https://i.stack.imgur.com/1I8Pz.jpg. You can then make scene Unit Scale 12 times smaller (1ft = 12 inches) and will get inches for one grid unit, https://i.stack.imgur.com/wOtcf.jpg. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/274/how-to-model-effectively-using-exact-measurements – Mr Zak May 26 '17 at 11:01
  • The value in the unit scale field in the scene properties changes to .0240. And I haven't discovered how to get the grid snap to 1/4" intervals. – NCFatBoy May 26 '17 at 12:10
  • Blender is not the very best for modeling with flexible precision. Default snapping (Shift+Tab, Increment mode) will use 1 grid unit as a snap interval. Pressing Shift with Ctrl will invoke 1/10 step precision. 2 ways to get 1/4 step - either change grid size via Scale setting in the scene properties or model kind of a hacky grid which will be used for measurements, also https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15847/how-to-change-the-snapping-increment-in-different-units. – Mr Zak May 26 '17 at 19:24
  • Ok, but what are the metric and imperial for if they do not work? And why is it supposed to be the best at modeling for 3D printing? – NCFatBoy May 27 '17 at 16:23
  • Can I model everything with 1" and higher dimensions and then scale down when complete? I am trying to model something that I eventually want to 3D print for a prototype. – NCFatBoy May 27 '17 at 16:33
  • Metric and Imperial work, they are used for modeling taking into account scale of the resulting model to keep track size and proportions. Blender wasn't supposed to be the best for 3D printing, although it's possible to use for that. To model using 1'' scale you'll need to calculate how much will new scale differ from actual one, model mesh with new scale and then scale it down with S in Edit mode (if in Object mode, apply scale with Ctrl+A). – Mr Zak May 27 '17 at 18:41

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