Noob question: Dimensions

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

How do you include dimensions to an object as shown in the attached image? I've looked up 'dimension', 'callout', 'annotation' and 'leader' in the help file, obviously to no avail. There must be some term for dimensions that I'm not thinking of.




Cheers,


Gamal Edited by: gamalprather on Apr 25, 2010 5:13 PM

[Anonymous]

Hello again,

Within 5 minutes of posting my first question, I found the answer. So, strike that one.

But I have a new, related series of questions related to measurements and another about snapping and a couple of others:

(1) I'm using these measurement locators on an off-axis construction plane. What I'm noticing (after messing with the settings and ultimately using the Projected option) is that when I'm in the perspective viewport, the measurements are not staying on that construction plane. At work, I'm a Rhino user (by circumstance, not by choice ... which is why I'm teaching myself Alias) and when I measure shapes, the dimensions stay on that construction plane. Is there a way to keep the measurements in Alias on a particular plane? To be clear, the endpoints of the locators aren't moving or anything, but the way the actual numbers of the measurement of the locator sort of float around kind of weirds me out. Just wondering.

(2) Is there a way to lock (specified or selected) measurements so that if I intentionally or inadvertantly delete my locators that the selected/specified locators don't get deleted? There are certain measurements that I will always want to know and be aware of and other locators that are far less important and can actually be deleted. I just want to avoid having to remeasure things all the time.

(3) In Rhino, there are a few different types of snaps ... End, Near (like a curve snap in Alias), Point (like the CV/Edit Point snap in Alias), Mid, Center, and Quad are those that I use most. The quad snap is a very important one for me. Say you have some odd shape, like the shape of an aviator lens for some sunglasses. How do you measure the full height and width of something like that? The quad snap in Rhino picks the most distal point in the x/u and y/v direction ... said differently, it just knows what the top/bottom-most and left/right-most point of a curve/object is. How can I replicate that in Rhino functionality in Alias?

(4) How do you draw a closed cv curve? I've discovered that I can draw the shape and leave it open (making sure the end point is near the first point on the curve) and then just attach one end to the other, but that sort of distorts the original shape I was drawing. I can work around that, of course, but I was curious if you can close a cv curve while you're drawing it ... I would assume that if you cv-snapped to the first point when you were done as you're drawing the curve initially, then that would close the curve or at least Alias might ask if you wanted to close that curve. I was drawing an aviator-esque shape to include in the attachment so that hopefully someone can show and explain how they measure the height and width on this flat shape which lies on an off-axis construction plane and realized that I haven't a clue how to close the shape.

(5) One last question: For the closed aviator shape that I've drawn in the attachment, is there a way to get Alias to draw a bounding box around that object (whether it's a flat 2d object or even a 3d object)? I do this in Rhino so that I can find the center of the shape (by drawing a vertical line and horizontal line from the midpoints of that bounding box), which helps me locate some other things later on in the project.

Thanks,
G!

[kevinRichards]

whats up Noob... i mean buddy : ) oops didnt open the attachment but hopefully these are on point.

1. pick locator > information window(ctrl+5) set it to horizontal or Vertical.

2. im assuming your using "Delete all locators" ? Delete locators by selecting them (Pick > Locator) and then Delete only the ones that you dont want.

3. thats interesting. im not certian how you would replicate that.

4. does it have to be closed? snapping the first and last CVs does make it a positional and is how i typically work. actually closing the shape is essentially making it periodic. (Object Edit > Close) i like to think of this tool as the Curve mangler. preserve Shape OFF works far better. when its ON, it hold the overall shape better but destroys the intersection which baffles me.

5. there is a Bounding box display in the ObjectDisplay menu. unfortunately it looks at the control point instead of the actual geometry which is not what you need. : (

[c3systems]

Hi G,

1,
Alias annotation text and dimension texts are
By default are not scalable according to window zoom (although you change the setting in the construction settings option)
Always face normal to the window.

2,
Kevin has already answered.

3 and 5
Please use the Curve Snap Option box. ( small arrow to the right of curve snap icon). You could set the snap divisions to any number you want.. in this case 4. Also the "snap to center" would allow you to snap to the center of the shape in one step.

4
Obeject Edit > close would close an open object and open a closed object