this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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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.
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.
as a minecraft player learning how to use autocad, i thought y up was alot more ubiquitous then it apparently is
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...! :-)