Need to swap Power Dimension menu for vanilla Dimension menu

[KevinMacDonald]

I would like to stop using Power Dimensions in Autocad 2013 Mechanical, and use the traditional (what I am calling 'vanilla') dimension commands. I believe the vanilla Dimensions menu can be made to appear through the CUI, however the CUI is a vast and complex beast. I have links to various tutorials. But rather than spending a day researching how to do this I am hoping someone can provide simple instructions on how to perform this one task.

Thanks 

[michaelsu · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Do you want to customize the annotate ribbon or just simply want to invoke commands? If you want to invoke commands, you can turn on dimension toolbar.

[KevinMacDonald]

This did solve my problem, although it is important to note that there are TWO additional dimension toolbars: one under 'Autocad' and one under 'Mechanical'. The old dimension toolbar seems to be very buried. I would like to figure out how to have it permanently show up every time I launch Autocad, but I suspect that is a very long and deep investigation into the CUI.

[steve216586 · Accepted solution]

Kevin,

I can walk you through it.

1. Open CUI

2. Select the TRANSFER tab at the top

3. On the left, there is a pull down which lists all the CUIX files. Select the one you use. (This may be the MAIN cui file (mech).cuix. It is ok if it is. The only time it becomes a problem to edit, is if you delete items. Which we won't)

4. On the right, the other pull down should be selected to the acad.cuix

5. You will need to open the "toolbars" +sign on both sides.

6. Click and hold the DIMENSIONS gray square box from the acad.cuix and drag it over to the MAIN (mech) cuix.

7. Click on "Apply" and "Close" at the bottom to close dialog box.

Now you should have the ability to right click in the gray area, at the top of your workspace, and select the Vanilla dimensions. They will show on your ribbon. You can de-select the Power Dimensions to close them. Save workspace, and it should save and open like this every time.

Let me know if you have any problems and we can work through it.

[KevinMacDonald]

Steve,

Thanks for the reply. I was eventually able to find the location of acad.cuix and pull it up in the Transfer tab. But I think this just achieved the same thing as checking the Dimension toolbar using the Toolbars command (under the View tab). Either way I get a thin strip of dimension commands that I am not able to 'dock' into the gray area at the top of my screen. But, I am at least able to use the familiar dimension commands such as DIMLINEAR. The are also responding correctly to the current annotative scale.

One thing that caught me by surprise. When I change the annotation scale it causes all dimensions in the drawing to update immediately to the new scale, which seems to suggest that I can only have one annotation scale in the drawing. True? Maybe that is as it should be. 

[dgorsman]

Model space can only have one current annotation scale, but you can change it on the fly and set a specific annotation scale to use for each named page set-up.  Paper space viewports can only have one annotation scale, but each one can be assigned a separate scale.  You can define as many scales in the drawing as you have need to support, including multiples of the same scale factor with different names to support different visibility conditions.