DimensionEngine recognizes all common science and engineering units and any combination of units. You can get a full listing of all recognized units here or by selecting the "Recognized Units" command from the DE Menu under Excel's ADD-INS tab.
Units should generally be singular and are case sensitive following standard conventions. However, DimensionEngine does recognize multiple spellings of the same units to accommodate common abbreviations (i.e., "in" and "inch") and to compensate for Excel's automatic spelling correction. For example, Excel frequently changes "MPa" to "Mpa", so both are recognized as indicating megapascals. Inverse units with no numerator should be entered using a negative exponent, e.g., s^-1, not 1/s.
DimensionEngine also recognizes all common mathematical functions that take a single value as input, e.g, exp() or ln(). The current version of DimensionEngine does not recognize common Excel functions that require multiple values as input, e.g., average().
As in standard Excel, by default DimensionEngine assumes angles for trigonometric functions such as sin(), cos(), etc. are in radians. However, unlike in Excel you can specify that the angles have units of "deg", in which case the angles are interpreted to be in degrees. For example, if we enter 45 in cell A1 and in cell A2 enter the formula "=sin(A1)", Excel indicates that the sine of 45 radians is -0.988. Converting this equation with "DE Convert" does not change this result. However, if we now indicate that the angle is in units of degrees by entering "deg" in cell B1, then DimensionEngine correctly changes the value of the sine function to 0.5.
DimensionEngine recognizes some advanced mathematical functions not recognized by Excel. For example, ExpInt() returns the value of the exponential integral. A complete list of recognized functions is available here or by selecting the "Recognized Functions" command from the DE Menu
When you transfer files containing converted DimensionEngine equations to other computers, Excel automatically appends the full pathname to all DimensionEngine function calls. This is a "feature" of Excel, not DimensionEngine. If the directory structure containing the Excel program is identical on both computers, this will not cause any problems. If, however, the two computers are set up differently or have different versions of Excel installed, after you transfer a file you will see the "#NAME?" error in any converted cell.
To fix these errors, simply click on the "Update DE Links" command from the DE Menu under Excel's ADD-INS tab (Windows) or under the DE Menu (Mac).
Anytime you convert an equation using "DE Convert", the converted cells are automatically highlighted so that you can easily recognize cells with converted equations. The “Set DE Preferences” command allows you to set the highlight color for converted cells. Setting the highlight color to “no fill” turns off automatic highlighting.
Using Mac Excel, the "Set DE Preferences" dialog has the option to set the Foreground Color. This option is currently ignored by DimensionEngine.