Creating Dimensions & Dimension Styles

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Introduction

In this project you master the skills required to create dimension styles in your drawings. Dimension styles control the appearance of your dimensions. Changes you make to a dimension style will affect all the dimensions that depend upon that style. By the time you have completed this project, you should have the skills required to create your own dimensions styles.

You learn how to:

• Create dimension styles
• Create dimensions based on dimension styles
• Modify dimension styles to change dimension appearance
• Control dimensions using dimension families
• Use DesignCenter to copy dimension styles between drawings

Tip:
Remember that you can use DesignCenter to copy dimension styles between drawings.

©1997-2005 OpenCAD International, Inc. www.opencad.com

Defining a Dimension Style

In this lesson you learn how to create an ANSI dimension style and draw a few dimensions. You also learn how changes you make to the dimension style are automatically reflected in the dimensions created while that style was active.

You will find the skills in this project useful in creating your own dimension styles. In most cases you should create a dimension style or import one from an existing drawing using DesignCenter prior to creating dimensions in your own drawings.

Prior to proceeding with this lesson, open 7401d.dwg. Remember, to open a drawing from a link, right-click on the drawing, then choose Save Target As or Save Link Target. Save the file to a folder on your local hard disk. You can then open it in AutoCAD.

1. From the Dimension menu, choose Style.



2. Choose New to indicate that you want to create a new dimension style.



3. In the New Style Name box, type ANSI-MECH. This will copy the properties of the Standard dimension style to the ANSI-MECH dimension style.



4. Choose Continue to exit this dialog box.
5. On the Symbols and Arrows tab, in the Center Marks area, select Line to indicate that you want to create center lines rather than center marks.



6. On the Text tab, type .25 in the Text height box.



7. On the Primary Units tab, in the Linear Dimensions area, from the Precision list, choose 0.000.



8. Choose OK to exit this dialog box.
9. Choose Set Current to make ANSI-MECH the Current Dimension Style.



10. Choose Close to exit this window.
11. From the Dimension menu, choose Radius.
12. Select the edge of the lower-right circle in the drawing.



13. Select a point below and to the right of the circle to place the dimension.



14. From the Dimension menu, choose Linear.
15. Press ENTER to indicate that you don't want to select the extension line origin. Instead, you would like to select a line and have AutoCAD find the end points automatically.
16. Select the long horizontal line near the top of the object.



17. Select a point above the line to position the dimension.



18. From the Dimension menu, choose Style.
19. Choose Modify.



20. On the Primary Units tab, in the Linear Dimensions area, from the Precision list, choose 0.00.



21. Choose OK to exit this dialog box.
22. Choose Close to exit this window. Note that the dimensions automatically update.

You can create dimension styles drawings then save those drawings as templates so you don't have to create them in every drawing. You can also use DesignCenter to display the dimension styles in any drawing so you can drag them into any other drawing. You can also use Design Center to show you all the dimension styles in an existing drawing, so you can drag it into the current drawing.

©1997-2005 OpenCAD International, Inc. www.opencad.com

This tutorial continues . . .