Why would a boss ask a carpenter for a piece of wood 1/3 of a meter long? What architect or engineer would specify this length instead of a number of millimeters?
I like that using imperial you have a hierarchy of measures: wholes, halves, quarters, eights, sixteenths. It's clear and precise. You know that if you needing to measure 16ths or 32ths things are getting weird.
With metric you have similar measures but the hierarchy isn't strongly defined: 100s of mm, 10s of mm, then maybe 5s of mm, and 2s of mms.
As far as dividing a meter into equal thirds, you wouldn't use a ruler to do that, or at least I wouldn't.
I like that you can fairly easily use the metric system to measure something that was that was made with imperial measures. You can't really say the same for the opposite without a bunch of estimates and holding unmemorable numbers.
What I do wonder is whether there is beauty in the ratios you naturally get from using imperial measures when furniture making or designing building façades.
I sure have seen some beautiful homes made with either system, however!
I'd definitely use a ruler in many cases, and I'm curious about your method. How'd you divide a meter into equal thirds?
Normally I would take measurements from my pre-existing pieces instead of the ruler. It's more accurate because it accommodates for any slight inaccuracies.
Sure, they use millimeters....but this is an unfortunate workaround for a defect of the metric system. The proof is that if you look at the number of millimeters in the specified length, more often than not its something like 1,200 millimeters, viz, a number which is really big and divisible by 3.