When uom isn't enough: Handling units of measurement in production CAD

by Rose Peck

As it turns out, handling units of measurement in the real world is actually really hard! uom is an awesome library that provides strong, static types to represent different measurement units. It’s tempting to just slap uom types on everything and call it a day, but when making production CAD software, this isn’t enough. Today we’ll be talking about all of the surprising challenges with real world unit handling, and investigating some solutions and their tradeoffs.

Picture of Rose Peck

Rose Peck

she/they
Software Developer at the Foresight Spatial Labs
Links: icon of github

Extremely average programmer, vacillating between “it’s so over” and “we’re so back”. I write Rust for a living at the Foresight Spatial Labs, making CAD software with the Bevy engine. I love writing, making games, and folding origami! I’m also a grandmaster Tetris player.