This handy little piece of software seamlessly integrates into Hammer and allows on-the-fly conversion of Source Engine units into metric or imperial units. It turns Hammer's rarely-used left-side of the status bar into a non-obtrusive real-time converter, showing the dimensions of an object in chosen units as you work on it, be it creating or resizing it in one of the 2D views. It proves incredibly useful when creating life-sized environments.
The conversion ratios come from data available on this page of the VDC (Valve Developer Community) wiki. As is explained, architecture (as well as props), human character models and 3D Skyboxes all work on different scales. Using this tool, you can easily switch between world-scale, human-scale and skybox-scale all within Hammer.
Click here to download the program (200 Ko). The zip file contains both the converter and its source code.
This tool has been approved for download by ModDB and thus can also be downloaded through their site (no registration required).
Simply extract the contents of the zip file to a folder on your computer and run hammerunitsconv.exe while Hammer is running. Then you can for example create a brush or select an existing one to see the converter in action.
These hotkeys only work when inside Hammer :
This hotkey works from anywhere :
If you wish to make a change to any of the parameters listed below, create a shortcut to the application, right-click said shortcut and select Properties. There, under the Shortcut tab, add one or more of the following options at the end of the Target textbox, so that it looks for example like this : "C:\Program Files\HammerUnitsConversionTool\hammerunitsconv.exe" "nowarning"
I wrote this program using AutoHotKey, a script language based on AutoIt. The source (.ahk file) is included in the zip file. You can modify, compile and redistribute the code any way you want, without even necessarily having to share your modified source if you don't want to (although that wouldn't hurt anyone). Just make sure you give credit :)
This program works without known issues and is able to handle any number of instances of Hammer running concurrently.
Please note that a desktop resolution of 1280x1024 or higher is required. Lower resolutions unfortunately can't display the conversion information in its entirety.
No responsibility taken if anything goes wrong regarding anything anywhere anytime.
Program created by Naoki Lambelet - http://www.naoki.ch - me@naoki.ch