Foreshortened linear dimension?

I don't really understand what you are trying to dimension. Can you provide an example?

The one thought that comes to mind is the use of broken views to dimension items that otherwise won't fit on a drawing. A good example is dimensioning the length of a long shaft where only the length, diameter, and end treatments are important.

You pretty much got it right, something that will not fit on the drawing sheet and needs to be broken up. Are you familiar with "match lines"? More of an civil or plant design drafting technique than mechanical. I am detailing a set of drawings of a building (actually a parking deck) and it is over 600' long so I need to break it up with match lines (I am using cropped views to break it up into two managable view sizes, one for the East end and one for the West end) but I still need a single dimension that represents the entire overall length even though for any given view that dimension will not actually be true to the objects being displayed in the drawing view. For example if the drawing view shows 300' of the building I still need to have a dimension showing 600' overall length in that view. I have figured out that I can create a single dimension that shows the entire length of the building (600') then create another dimension for the portion I am trying to show in one of the views (300'), delete the for the

300' dimension place a regular note, group it to the 300' dimension and link that note to the 600' dimension. Then I hide the original 600' dimension. That way I am showing the overall length and it is still parametric to the model so that if the building gets bigger or smaller my "dimension" will update. I am sure all that is very confusing to read. The last remaining problem is that I want to show a double arrow head to represent the fact that this dimension is forshortened.

Guess I could just fake it and sketch in another arrow head but I was hoping for something better.

Maybe create a block with double arrow heads and place that at the end of the dimension?

Sam

Have you considered using broken views to show the two ends and still represent the overall length? That might be just what you need.

Between the approach you have taken and possibly using some broken views in places, that is all I have ever heard of for dealing with such situations.

If you discover any other tricks, please tell us about it.

I started to comment on using broken views in my first response, that comes close to working but now quite and of course does not do anything for the arrow head problem. Using broken views I have to insert two sets of breaks per each view because the area I am removing a little bit from both ends of the view and keeping the middle, which works fine but also removes some sketch entities that I have sketched (and dimensioned too) in the drawing view that I need. Using broken views comes close but still not quite right.

thanks for the effort...

Sam,

If I understand you - for example, if you have a 5 inch long part with a small feature on the end, and want an overall dim from one end to a point on the feature that would normally get lost because it's so small and you can't use a broken view. I have worked around something like this by creating a detail view of the feature, and importing the dim from the model into the detail. Now, the detail is at a scale that this reference dim's other end goes halfway across the drawing, right? (This is why you would want a foreshortened linear dim) The workaround I use is to edit the property of the dim I want to foreshorten, click "display" and uncheck the "display first" (or second) extension and dimension lines. This will in effect hide the half of your dimension hanging out of the detail view. Then drag the dim text over to the location you want in the detail view and insert a zig-zag block next to the dim text. (Oh yea, forgot to say I created a zig-zag block that has the "broken" or zig-zag lines normally found in a foreshortened dimension line). It all sounds a lot longer than it takes, but is kind of easy if you just need to show part of a dim in a detail view. If it's not what your looking to do, at least maybe it'll give you an idea for your application. And of course, as always if someone has a simpler way to do what I described above, please let me know - Always willing to learn a potential simple or easier way of something I could be missing!!

Scott

"Sam" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Whoops - Should have read your post better - sorry!

Scott