Sketch Dimension is always an angle, I want a distance

[bentwookie]

2.0.1149

Howdy. I'm a big noob so hopefully this is something dumb I'm doing and not just a bug.

I have a sketch with a big rectangle which contains a smaller rectangle. I'm trying to specify a distance between A and B (in red). I can do this on other parts of the drawing, but in this instance, it always wants to declare an angle. 

I create this dimension by clicking on A, then B and dragging north-east. I've done it this way before and created a distance dimension. What's different about this case?

[SallyYang · Accepted solution]

Thanks for posting the issue.

Would you please check if the two sketch lines parallel with each other? You can add sketch constraint to make them parallel first then adding dimension will get a distance value.

You can change the "Angular precision" in Preference dialog, then you can see whether the angle is real "0" or not between line A and B.

[bentwookie]

Intresting. So I added parallel constraints to the two lines and tried to add the dimension. It worked! I then undid the constraints and changed my precision in the preferences. I added the dimension again and expected to see something like .0001, but instead it just worked again!

Sounds like a bug. 

[bentwookie]

Stranger still, I went away did some stuff in another app and came back to this. Now it's reading 179.99842º. These boxes came imported from an Illustrator SVG file (where I know they're all parallel).

[SallyYang]

When you remove the constraint, the line will not be reset back as it didn't remember the previous position. I think this is a common behavior in CAD program.

[SallyYang]

It probably caused by different precision in different program. Could you please send us the SVG file to help us address the issue? You can attach it here or send email to : Sally.Yang(at)autodesk.com.

Thank you for helping us improve the quality.

[bentwookie]

When I removed it, I did it via undo, not by deleting the constraint. I'd hope undo would preserve and restore state. Thanks for helping me through it. I'll send you the file. It's pretty simple. 

[SallyYang]

Summarize the issues in this post:

1. Failed to add distance dimension between specific lines.

As the lines are not parallel, so it added angle dimension instead of distance dimension.

2. Why the parallel lines in SVG become not parallel after import & dimensioning in Fusion?

Here I list the steps you send from email:

      1) Import the SVG file

      2) Select it all and unfix all the constraints

      3) Add a dimension between the left side of the small box and the left side of the enclosing large rectangle.

      4) Try to add a dimension between the top of the small box and the top of the enclosing large rectangle.

In step 2, you unfix the constraint sketches that imported from SVG, then all the lines become free. And in step 3, you add dimension between other parallel lines and change the value of dimension, the lines will update accordingly, so the paralleled lines could become unparalleled. In order to check whether the lines parallel at import, you can use Measure under INSPECT to check the lines in fixed mode. Or you can reverse step 3 and 4 to see if it's a case specific issues.

3. Undo constraint will not restore the previous state.

I didn't reproduce it with your file, could you give more detail information about it? 

Thanks very much!

[bentwookie]

I've tried to reproduce this a few times with a new file and with the old one. I'm not able to. I'll try some more and if I'm able to hit on some steps, I'll reply back.