In this paper we present some new properties of the metric dimension defined by Bouligand in 1928 and prove the following new projection theorem: Let dim b (A − A) denote the Bouligand dimension of the set A − A of differences between elements of A. Given any compact set A ⊆ R N such that dim b (A − A) < m, then almost every orthogonal projection P of A of rank m is injective on A and P | A has Lipschitz continuous inverse except for a logarithmic correction term.