[jonathan lall]

We're a Canadian team that uses both, but more Imperial than metric. Since we use materials and mechanisms that rely on both systems, we have both sets of tools. As a result, our students have the distinct advantage of being able to read and use both systems, which is not something I can say for our US counterparts... not that they need to from a purely functional perspective I suppose.

There should be an option for both, and for Canadian teams, I'd argue there's little choice but to use both. If we wanted to get components and in some (rarer) cases, materials in Canada, metric measurements would often be used by manufacturers and suppliers. But if we're CADding or assembling the frame, we use Imperial. This is because most of the stuff we deal with still is. For example, say we need to get some aluminum stock for a gearbox from the supplier down the road. We're much less likely to get 10mm than 1/2" stock, so we design for Imperial. In practice, most materials are still measured in Imperial in the sectors we deal with in Canada, because it makes the most sense for certain suppliers to do so (for a multitude of reasons you can probably figure out on your own). Even though the rest of the civilized world (including Great Britain, the originator of the Imperial system) theoretically uses the more integrated and straightforward metric system, Imperial is far more appropriate for FIRST teams to use in any country, not only because FIRST uses Imperial measurements in its own documents and standards, but because the industrial sector of Canada we deal with does too.

Hence, we are forced to use and know both. It's not a big deal.