a profile (line) or on a surface (area). The profile roughness parameter (, , ...) are more common. The area roughness parameters (, , ...) give more significant values. Profile roughness parameters The profile roughness parameters are included in BS EN ISO 4287:2000 British standard, identical with the ISO 4287:1997 standard. The standard is based on the ″M″ (mean line) system. There are many different roughness parameters in use, but is by far the most common, though this is often for historical reasons and not for particular merit, as the early roughness meters could only measure . Other common parameters include , , and . Some parameters are used only in certain industries or within certain countries. For example, the family of parameters is used mainly for cylinder bore linings, and the Motif parameters are used primarily in the French automotive industry. The MOTIF method provides a graphical evaluation of a surface profile without filtering waviness from roughness. A motif consists of the portion of a profile between two peaks and the final combinations of these motifs eliminate ″insignificant″ peaks and retains ″significant″ ones. Please note that is a dimensional unit that can be micrometer or microinch. Since these parameters reduce all of the information in a profile to a single number, great care must be taken in applying and interpreting them. Small changes in how the raw profile data is filtered, how the mean line is calculated, and the physics of the measurement can greatly affect the calculated parameter. With modern digital equipment, the scan can be evaluated to make sure there are no obvious glitches that skew the values. Because it may not be obvious to many users what each of the measurements really mean, a simulation tool allows a user to adjust key parameters, visualizing how surfaces which are obviously different to the human eye are differentiated by the measurements. For example, fails to distinguish between two surfaces where one is composed of peaks on an otherwise smooth surface and the other is composed of troughs of the same amplitude. Such tools can be found in app format. By convention every 2D roughness parameter is a capital followed by additional characters in the subscript. The subscript identifies the formula that was used, and the means that the formula was applied to a 2D roughness profile. Different capital letters imply that the formula was applied to a different