• Buck Fucket@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ugh, when I have to open CAD for a project at work I have to setup a new coordinate system with Z going up, every time. The engineers just work with Y up for some reason. Too lazy to change it perhaps? Solid works and Inventor default Y up? I’ll never understand it. I definitely understand this meme. There’s also models with an origin 10 feet off in X and 20 feet out in Y. I just do not friggin get it man.

    • TwilightKiddy@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Because math works with Y up. Physics steal from math, engeneering steals from physics, so, here you are.

      What I can’t get is imperial measurement system. Apparently, nobody but americans can. And that stuff is far worse than Y and Z switching places.

      • ionburger@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        as a minecraft player learning how to use autocad, i thought y up was alot more ubiquitous then it apparently is

      • Widowmaker_Best_Girl@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s what I don’t get. Why would they make Z up when in algebra, Y is up. It’s all based on math, shouldn’t we keep consistent on that?

        • Mhlindsey@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Because the z axis is represented as an extension of the xy-plane, coming out of the paper essentially, so we represent it as up

      • dan@upvote.au
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        1 year ago

        What I can’t get is imperial measurement system. Apparently, nobody but americans can

        I’m not American but I’ve been living in the USA for ten years and I still have trouble with imperial measurements. It’s painful dealing with fractions of an inch instead of millimeters.

      • Mhlindsey@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That’s not true though. While there isn’t a standard, convention is to have z up in mathematics, as z is extending the xy plane we normally work with into a third space.

        • TwilightKiddy@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Might depend on where you were learning.

          On paper, when I was learning Descartes’ coordibate system, we used Y as up and X as left-right. And when it was time to plot in 3D, we used Z to “extend” the plane into yourself and away from yourself.

          You just hold your sheet of paper perpendicular to the ground (or just use a whiteboard) and it all makes sense.

    • amanaftermidnight@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      CAD used to be digital abstraction of the physical media that is 2D drawings on paper, so XY is the plane of the paper going horizontal/vertical, and most detailing are in vertical cross sections so Y ended up being up most of the time.

      The Z axis is then Frankensteined into the existing system to get a proper 3D representation, so it became the depth axis for the existing XY plane.

      In Minecraft it’s even more evident as Notch Frankensteined the Z axis into a game engine that’s originally developed for side scrolling.

    • heeplr@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      In which world should Z point up and Y represent depth?

      Totally crazy opposite world, where cats hunt dogs and rain goes up? This is plain evil…! :-)