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How do I dimension a drawing?

Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 1:28 am
by cmhurley
How do I dimension a drawing.

Problem: The dimension feature does not display in the drawing as I assumed it would.

I was expecting something like |<- 48" ->|.

I'm using QCAD Community 2.0.5.0 on Fedora Core 10

My main interest in using QCAD is to enable me to draw dimensioned drawings of wood working projects.

In my initial trials, I am not seeing the dimensions in the drawing.

I have created three layers in addition to the main ( zero [ 0 ] ) layer. They are 'Drawing', 'Dimension', 'Construction Lines'.

The settings in Edit, Current Drawing Preferences, Dimensions are:
Text height: 0.1
Extension Line extension: 0.1
Extension Line offset: 0.1
Dimension Line gap 0.1
Arrow size: 0.1

The units of measurement are inches.

I have tried several of the dimension options ( aligned, horizontal ). They all seem to lay a line down directly on the line entity of the wood piece and the arrow and the numbers indicating the dimension, in short the structure I've seen in other CAD programs that display the dimension starting and ending point and the measurement are not present.

I'm using green as the color for the Drawing layer, yellow for the Dimension layer and magenta for the Construction Lines.

Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 2:00 am
by cmhurley
I found part of the answer. My preference settings are too small. I increased them and now I see the line, arrows, numbers but the dimension line is still co-incident to the line I want to measure. I was hoping the line would stand above or below the entity I'm trying to show measurement of.

Any way to fix that?

Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 12:04 pm
by andrew
cmhurley wrote:I was hoping the line would stand above or below the entity I'm trying to show measurement of.
The dimension line is positioned in a separate step. Note that you might want to use the snap tool "free" or "snap to grid" to position the dimension line.

See also:
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad/manual_r ... ter24.html

Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 2:28 pm
by cmhurley
Thanks for the response.

I've been using the Aligned, Linear and Horizontal/Vertical options in the dimension tool set.

Following the diagram for the Aligned and Linear and using the snap to intersection automatic I click the left end point of the entity I want the dimensions line of then click the right end then , since this is a horizontal line, I click somewhere above the line the third time.

The dimension line appears co-incident to the line I'm dimensioning with the numbers representing the distance positioned above it.

I've tried to select the dimension line an drag it up inside the extension lines but it all seems to be a single entity ( extension lines, dimension line, arrows and text ).

I'm not understanding what you mean about positioning the dimension line separately.

Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 4:52 pm
by andrew
Horizontal dimensioning of horizontal line:

- start horizontal dimensioning tool
- choose snap to end point
- click left end point of line
- click right end point of line
- choose snap free or snap to grid
- set position of dimension line

Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 10:17 pm
by cmhurley
Great!

Thank you very much Andrew.