by jasper » 25 May 2014, 19:41
No - none of the COUSCOUS units does unit conversion.
When you double click any unit operation in COFE, you first get to see what COFE sees from the unit. This includes parameters, and their dimensionality. COFE has a unit conversion system, and offers it at that level.
Then there is Show GUI. This will show the dialog that belongs to the unit operation. None of the ones included in COCO will provide unit conversion. If you enter parameter values at this level, it will always be in SI units. But typically there is no need to, as you can do it on the COFE level.
Here you are entering an expression at the unit operation level. This expression takes inputs from parameters, of which the values have SI units. A similar thing happens in reaction expressions in CORN, also expressions that use variables that are only available in SI units.
The only way around that would be to provide a unit conversion system at COUSCOUS and at CORN level (note that these are different binary modules than COFE, each module uses CAPE-OPEN interfaces only to interact). Seems like an overkill. The unit conversion systems would not be aware of each other. So they would not be aligned with each other; you would still to select your unit of measure separately on COFE level than on COUSCOUS level. CAPE-OPEN transfers dimensionality but not unit conversions. It would not be straight forward to capture unit conversion systems in a generic interface, as the diversity is rather large.
Next there would need to be unit conversion systems built in to the Excel unit operation, Matlab unit operation, Scilab unit operation, FlowExchange unit operation, etc.