Dimensioning Questions/Wishes

I’m not sure if these are going to end up being how-to questions or feature requests, but here it goes:

When you are creating a dimension where the text won’t fit between the extension lines you initially get something like this (if you’ve chosen to have the text above the line):

Moving the text to the right or left gives you this, with the arrows moving to the outside of the lines:

This is all good so far, except that our (ACAD) drafting standards specify that it should look like this:

What I can’t figure out, is how to make the arrows stay inside the lines, and in a perfect world, we would also be able to extend the dimension line out under the text. In the Properties dialog there is a button for "Arrows Inside always, but that doesn’t seem to have any effect.
Is this possible, and if not, could it be added to the wish list?

  1. Related to the above images, is it possible to suppress the zero for small fractional dimensions?

  2. Would it be (or is it) possible to set the annotation dots so that they can be printed without the bubble around them? Maybe as an option in the print dialog, the dots would still look the same on the screen. Again this is a style issue, the bubble doesn’t fit our standards, but the dots work great in the model for frame spacing layout.

  3. In AutoCAD you can add an “Oblique Angle” to text, would this be possible in Rhino? We use 10 degrees with our text, Roman S, in ACAD. Italic would probably work, but you can only set it for text, not dimensions.

That’s it for now, I am just getting started trying to emulate our companies drafting standards in Rhino and these are a couple of things that jump out. Our CAD Manager is kind of a stickler and is not at all sold on using Rhino for drafting so if I’m going to try to do more 2D work directly out of Rhino, I’m going to have to come close on some of these issues.

Thanks in advance for any help.

…And maybe if you can, in addition, show some perceptible productivity and overall quality improvements, your CAD manager will feel inspired to broaden his standards. :smile:

Hi Craig- yeah, as far as I can see at least these are feature requests… I"ll add your comments to the bug tracker.

@Mary and @Lowell might have more to say as well- they are much more ‘up’ on this dimensioning style stuff than I am.

thanks,

-Pascal

Ha! @AlW you must mean little stuff like assuring that all the views are matching and are always up to date with the 3-D model, less duplication of effort, etc…

I’ve been making that pitch for a while now but our contingent of Rhino users is still a relatively small part of our design team so the folks who are new to Rhino are sometimes resisting assimilation.

The bottom line is that these little style things are easy to nit-pick so if I can fix as many of them as possible and produce drawings in Rhino that look close to coming out of AutoCAD, then I’ll be in a better position to negotiate the things that aren’t easy to fix, like the oblique angle which, I’m sure that 95% of our clients would not even notice if we changed.

Anyway, sorry to get off topic, and thanks for the responses.

  1. I agree that the arrows should stay inside the lines if you’ve chosen “Arrows inside always” but if you move the dimension up or down a little bit the arrows go back inside. They reverse direction when the dimension is in line with them.

  2. You can lose the zero before fractions by using Inch Fractional rather than Foot Inch Fractional. Admittedly not a great solution as you should be able to control this in any dimension style and having different dimension styles in one document can cause problems.

I hope this helps in some way and I hope all of these requests get fed into the stream for V6

Yes. Now I remember that that’s how we do it in ACAD, using a different style for dims under 1 ft. Thanks!

Hello All
Not sure if this the right topic, by the title it sound I am not far.
I would like to add a wish as well, or it may exist and I dont know it.
I would like to creata a radial dimension (that can read the radious and the length) as in standard CAD packages. and the ability to create a chain dimension that can be shortent or extended by adding and removing vertices.

.

Hi MNT- I am not sure I get this quite- are there two types of dimension info (arc length and radius) combined in one dimension?

thanks,
-Pascal

yes, there should be an obtion to choose between lenght or the radious. or perhaps show both of them. can the chain function be added to the linear dimension as weel please?
currently there a way to choose continues domension, but it does not act as one.

RH-21176 is fixed in the latest WIP. Download from New Rhino WIP Available