why dont maya give you a dimention of the object your working on . how far between verts, how long is an edge, square feet of a face, volume of a cube. i mean come on why not. its alot of stuff to keep track of sure but its your own fault for not geting rid of history right? i think we need to know real dimentions all the time without using a mesuring tool that dont work half the time. cad has done this scince day one why not integrade it to maya.
MAya is not a cad application. Use numeric imput.
i realize that but why not make it easier. this is a wish list is it not?
Yes but its for usefull wishes. IF everyone woudl wish for everything their uncle told them non of the wishes would never be fullfilled. So wish for things that cant be scripted or simply by modified by few lines of mel. THe user interface is open so that you can modify the prog to suit your needs.
Theese wishes are for new implementations that either are impossible to carter for without Alias intervention.
In your case just making a melscript to calc the data is simple as hell... Then thats the way it should be done. Aside form the fact that you never realy need such things if you adapt your workflow a bit.
Amaya isnt a eingeneering application after all. Its a art tool and art tools dont concern them selves with precice measurements.
Doesn't Alias make studio for work like that?
yes! Offcourse but all those people that thnk maya is expensive get a heart attack you se the price tag on studio tools or any other similliar industrial design app.
They could do this.. I have seen alot of people coming from MAX complain about it. But Maya doesn't cater to CAD users or architects so one has to wonder why those people are using Maya?
OK for dimensioning tools they do ship some dimensioning tools with maya bonus tools that can alleviate the problem! Namely edge length, and vertex distance hud. Volume is hard because maya modells arent volumetric (they are pure surfaces only)! Same way you could calculate the area. (had soem problems get them working in maya 6.5 to fix move their secion in the scripts to 1 for example) The scripts can easily be modified to calcculate apparent realworld scale in feets and inches if wished.
Anyway they COULD do a lot of things... Is this actualy the imperative nunmber one issue? But sure.
As for feet and inches... well okay this is actualy a problem, but hey SI units were inveted a loong time ago (now if someone could remap the day to be dividied into 10 base, intelligently 
). I mean most of the designers in the world choose to measure in this system, because it easire to calculate. Even architects over here measure in meters, making my life much much easier (no they dont use feet, seems that only place they do is the americas and maybe england).
Anyway they could expose the inputs of channelbox somehow for filtter scripting before passing in and out as it would solve this problem quite well.
But in general right units in prefs are only a form of limitted thinking. Its a workflow theyve allways used to think is carved in stone and it confuses the hell out of them. There are no such things as units in reality, just propotions. To quote a very smart person with a extremely good ieda "everything is realative".
Example. a meter is only as long as it is because we have a realworld reference for this length (in our case lightspeed, but in a computer lightspeed is infinite, makeing a 1 computer meter infinite ). So because theres no real world reference in a 3d app ANY length is this as long as the reference is this. So any unit will suffice.
Not that we cant inject the reference but since all or calcs are based on this unit conversion theres no matter. Now why alias chooses cartain values to be hacked into stone and not change with units is beyond me, if they werent it woudl be easier.
Anyway maya inst a cad. BUT maya works wih most cad progs very well especialy now that they did the step translator. Alttough max has a edge in autocad files theres no such edge in other apps. I mean proe works much better with maya than with max!
PS. i work with cad tools almost weekly. will change soon as im going to be using them for a living!
I still think you should use the tools that do the job.
Maya isn't made for this kinda of work really, choose a package that is. If you like Alias interface and style, well bite the bullet and buy studio. Work that specific should also pay what it takes to get the tools needed.
Coming as I do from an industrial design and CAD background, I admit I was initially frustrated that I couldn't easily achieve anal precision with my modelling in Maya. Then my tutor gave me the same advice as above - use the right tool for the job. Nobody seems to mind that Maya's paint tools are no Photoshop - they just use photoshop! If you want the precision modelling and dimensions capability that CAD programs offer, use a CAD program.