dimension ignorance

Autocad acting normally (snafu). Use an ortho veiw and actually snap to something. Otherwise, as you have found out, you never know where things will end up. A better solution would be a better modeler. Acad does great in

Just set the UCS origin to one of the points you are dimensioning. You'll probably find a macro helpful for this somewhat tedious task!

only thing I know about macro is I like mine with cheese

would be funny if it wasn't so sad

Well I can't really help because I'm still using an older version of AutoCAD. I think it might be different in 2006 but in my version you can customize and create new toolbars by right clicking on them.

So, I make a new toolbar and then add a new, user defined button to it, give it a name, a description and a pretty picture and then assign it the following macro...

^C^C_UCS O \^C^C_DIMLINEAR;

This is exactly what you would type into the command line each time to achieve the same effect. "^C^C" is like pressing escape a couple of times and "\" means pause for user input.

Perhaps someone else can enlighten you as to how to achieve the same thing in 2006.

=================================================== I do most of my dimensioning in model space, and I do a lot of 3D work.

When dimensioning in 3d model space, you need to be able to see what object you are snapping to when you dimension, and therefore you should probably use one of the iso views when doing so, so you can put your dimension on the object you actually want to dimension. It's really pretty simple. You can use the 'orbit 3D' to assist you in changing your view to suit your needs. Your dimensions will appear correctly then, both in 3D and in a 'plane' view, like 'top' or 'left', etc.

If you dimension using a 'plane' view, like top, AutoCAD doesn't distinguish objects, and as you've found it will snap to anything you have set at the particular point (relative x,y but NOT z) to your view.

Norm - NorthSlope Detailing

, thanks , I am dimensioning in model space in s.e. iso view

with the ucs set to left and picking points on the left face the dimension appears on the right face or off in space

i am thinking i have a setting wrong or something unchecked

set your ucs to world then use dimaligned. The dim linear is relativ to the view, dimaligned is not. If you are using your osnaps yo should be able to do this just fine. So many different UCS scre everything up. The UCS is nice for aligneing things to sheets etc.. but everything you create that has to relative to something real ie. lines, dimensions, etc All of this should be done in World. That's why it's therel