Different behaviour in dimensioning with BricsCAD and AutoCAD

Richard Ernstberger
Richard Ernstberger
in 2D Drafting

Hi all,
during my tests with BricsCAD i have noticed a difference in creating dimensions with BricsCAD and AutoCAD.

It's about the display of the dimension text while dragging a dimension to specify the text insertion point.
Example: _DIMLINEAR
When the 2 base points are specified the dimesion text is displayed and can be dragged.
In AutoCAD i can control the dimesion text in this stage to set 'DIMDEC to a appropriate value and the text of the just dragged dimesion respects my transparent changes in DIMDEC.
In BricsCAD the transparent change of DIMDEC is ignored.
In AutoCAD i have provided some toolbar buttons to set the desired number of digits via 'DIMDEC to edit a dimension just being dragged.

This is probably a unusual workflow, but in our daily work we have to change the value of DIMDEC very frequently during dimensioning.
A typical situation: dimensioning a rather small but complex part.
Customers fact sheets require to adjust the number of digits in a dimension to 3 or 4 (standard value is 2) in order to specify precision and the according manufacturing process (i.e. wire edm or precision grinding).
When there's not much space for a large number of dimensions it's absolutely helpful to be able to expand the dimension text to it's final length while dragging it.
So we can better see where's enough space to place the dimension.
Surely, many might give the advice to set the number of digits before starting the dimension command.
This is what we try to do, but we're all humans and so we end up with numerous situations where a designer forgets to adjust the number of digits in advance.

So i frankly ask about changing BricsCAD's behaviour to operate like AutoCAD in this workflow.

Kind regards,
Richard

Comments

  • Louis_Verdonck
    Louis_Verdonck
    edited January 2018

    @Richard Ernstberger said:
    In BricsCAD the transparent change of DIMDEC is ignored.

    In BricsCAD the transparent change of DIMDEC is not ignored, the only difference compared to AutoCAD is that the dynamic text ignores the new DIMDEC value. The dimension text reflects the change once the dimension is placed.

  • Richard Ernstberger
    Richard Ernstberger

    Hi Louis,
    thank you for looking into my post.

    Your point is exactly what i have decribed.

    But it seems you could not get my problem.

    Anyway, i will try to make some other explanations.
    When placing dimensions in a complex overcrowded drawing it's rather hard to place them right when the shape of the dimension and the psoition of the dimesion text changes completely when the DIMDEC value is taken into account (i.e. increased from 2 to 4).
    I have created a sample image to show the difference.

    This is a rather simple case, it gets more complicated when the dimesnion text with 2 digits fits between the arrows while with 4 digits it jumps outward the arrows.

    Hopefully you can understand my intention when looking a the image.

    Kind regards,
    Richard
    image

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