I was recently on an off week from my freelance project, so I took the time to make a few updates to YouKon, the multiplatform unit conversion app I have been developing, targeted to engineers. These updates are demonstrated in a pair of YouTube videos, which I will describe in this post. If you are interested in trying YouKon, I encourage you to follow the links below and join the beta test.
Download the App
YouKon is now available for beta testing at the following links:
Check out YouKon on YouTube
New Menu Interface and New Units
The first video covers some of the cleaned up UI for having many different unit types, and the usage of those in what I call the “Quick Convert” panel.
The early versions of YouKon included a fairly limited set of options, because everything was contained in a single dropdown menu. Dropdowns are good for about 10 or fewer selections, but beyond that you get into scrolling dropdowns, making the interface cluttered and harder to navigate.
To improve this, I made the unit selection nested, with the first set of options being the unit types (mass, for example), and the nested dropdown being the specific unit (kilogram, slug, …). With the cleaned up interface, YouKon now includes >50 unit options, with more to come.
Also, I finally added temperature conversions, which will help me greatly now that we’re living in Spain.
Creating Metal Material Properties
One of the target applications I’ve envisioned for YouKon is to maintain a material property database, and quickly convert between consistent unit systems for whatever convention your project employs. At various times in my career I’ve had to open up a copy of Metallic Materials Properties Development and Standardization (MMPDS) and scroll to page seven hundred and something to pull a set of reliable properties for the material I was analyzing. I would then usually convert to SI for my models. Not the most arduous of tasks, but one I always thought could be more organized and automated. Here is a video example, showing how you can create a project containing multiple measurement properties, enter them using the same unit systems as used in your source (in this case, pounds and inches from MMPDS).
A responsible structural analyst should always turn to a credible source for material properties. In my industry, this is MMPDS. Among my peers, this is regarded as THE source for metal properties. One problem though, the particular standardization they have used is to use pound units for mass and inch units for length – which may not be the choice we would make to build our finite element models, and may not even be consistent with each-other depending on our selection of a force unit.
Conversion of mass, elasticity, and strength properties for structural analysis models can be a time consuming process. What the video shows is a demonstration of how YouKon may be used to create a project containing multiple measurement properties of the material, and convert them together into a single, consistent unit system.
Summary
The two points that I highlight in the recent improvements to YouKon are:
- Improved selection interface, and many more available measurement units (>50)
- Project creation, handy for storing material properties
The project is saved, both locally and in the Google Firebase Cloud storage system, so you may build your own material database, and share it across multiple devices.
I’m excited to release YouKon in the very near future, until then I hope you will join the beta test and give it a try!
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