At my architectural millwork company, we have introduced a new drafting workflow using clipping drawings which auto-hatches and updates the 2d linework based on the 3D model. This has saved us a lot of drafting time which was, before spent manually moving lines and/or doing make 2ds over and over again, separated from the model.
However, I now spend additional time manually moving dimension grips, which do not auto-update when the model is tweaked and clipping drawing is updated. For complex projects, this can be very frustrating and at a point, it becomes easier to delete all dimensions and start from scratch.
If it is for some reason impossible to have dimension histories maintained after clipping drawings have updated, have a few other ideas that I would love to see implemented.
A command that restores the history of dimensions whose grips have been manually moved to new corners/edges, after the 2d linework in the clipping drawing was updated.
A command that snaps selected dimension grips to the nearest, new clipping drawing corners/edges
Does anybody experience this frustration while drafting in Rhino and have a solution that I’m not thinking of?
Well if the goal is to have all dims with a ‘history’ or be defined/attached to a point or edge and therefore reflect the true dimension of the geometry, this would allow you to ensure that relationship exists for dimensions that were broken, and then manually dragged back to the desired corner/edge.
Move is manual, my thought was for there to be a way for a dimension to be selected, and a new command be input which would automatically search and then snap undefined grips to the nearest corner. It seems like it could get messy though… if the geometry changed drastically, for example, it could snap to an unintended corner of the geometry.
Another useful command would be a select command, like SelUndefinedDim that would allow one to distinguish and repair dimensions that are floating/not attached to a corner or edge.
It could also be an option within SelDim to select between undefined/defined dims
Yes. But once you have manually repaired the dimension after a drawing update, what else is going to make that dimension be wrong again? Another drawing update would do that anyway.
Yes.
I agree. Not being able to find orphaned dimensions is a major flaw, in my opinion.
This is on the list as RH-10533 Nuke history on orphans
You can use the SelParents command with a dimension preselected. If the command finishes and leaves the dimension selected, it means that history is intact. If, on the other hand, the command deselects the dimension and prompts to select child objects, it means that the dimension is orphaned. That’s a theoretical work-around only…
-wim