Controlling the angle of architectural ticks when dimensioning...

[jmldg]

Hello all.  I am very new to dimensioning with autocad - just got my boss to agree today to use cad's dimensions instead of the way he's always done it... which is dimensioning everything (everything!) by hand.  Clearly that's just nonsense.  But what is important is that I make sure these new autocad dimensions look exactly like the ones we do by hand.

I think I've pretty much got the basics down, I just have one major problem: tick orientation.  When doing horizontal dimensions, the ticks run from bottom left to upper right.  When doing vertical dimensions, they flip.  This would drive my boss nuts... to the extent that I doubt I could get him to buy into this if I can't figure out how to keep the ticks running in the same direction. 

I understand I could just dimension with no ticks whatsoever, and then just go copy them in by hand, but that reeks of the old, laborious way of dimensioning... and it really seems like there should be an easy answer to always keeping the ticks running the same way.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!  You can probably understand how many hours/weeks we waste on dimensioning by hand. 

[leothebuilder · Accepted solution]

You can create two custom blocks "tick" with the proper rotation you want for horizontal and vertical dimensions.

Then create two dimension styles, one for horizontal and the other for vertical.

My best regards to your boss....

[David_W_Koch]

Are you kidding?  The orientation of the tick marks is the same, relative to the text.  If I were drafting by hand (and I am old enough to have done so), I would do it the same way AutoCAD does.

Even if you have the fee to cover the time it would take to fuss with two different dimension styles, that time would be better spent on something important, like the design, or verifying code compliance (or sleeping).  Not that you have any control over that.  My condolences.

[leothebuilder]

You're correct, that suggestion does not work.

Mind you...trying something like that beats dimensioning by hand on top of a cad file.

It's his boss that is **** about the orientation of tick marks...not me

One other suggestion....you can set your dimension style to not having a tick or arrow.

Then add the ticks to your preferred orientation at the intersection of the dim line and dim extensions.

[leothebuilder]

Actually, I have to correct myself, you can achieve this with custom tick blocks and two dimension styles.

See attached dwg. which is not refined but indicates that this is possilbe.

Silly idea ? sure, but I have seen people do a lot of strange things to achieve a certain outcome.

[David_W_Koch]

Sorry, I should have replied to the original poster. I was not questioning the workability of your suggested solution, nor was I objecting to you making the suggestion. I was expressing my dismay that in this age of ever shrinking fees for more work in less time that anyone in this profession would insist on wasting precious time on a totally irrelevant graphic embellishment. My condolences to the original poster; if the powers that be cannot be swayed, perhaps your two-dimension-style solution will help to ease the pain and minimize the time required to achieve the mandated results.

[jmldg]

David, yes I completely agree that it's a waste of time and resources.  Consider that I only just discovered batch plot, and for the past 15 years they had been plotting each sheet individually.  So although I enjoy the work at this firm, it is very centered in "the way we've done things", and getting any changes takes some persuasion on my part.  Unfortunately, trying to say to my employer that tick marks don't always need to run in the same direction (although, yes they are quite clearly running the same *relative to the text*) is a no-go. 

But I really don't want to dimension by hand.  So with that, setting up two dimstyles is no problem whatsoever and still a huuuge timesaver for me.

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks some of this is a bit excessive 😉

[jmldg]

Hi leo thank you for the responses... sorry it's taken me a few days to get back - I was kind of forced into a three day weekend.  Positives and negatives there, but anyway, on to the mission at hand: setting up the tick blocks.

So I read elsewhere that getting the sizing of the ticks correct when creating/formatting the blocks is important.  I read something about making it "one unit size".  Is that important?  If so, what might that size be?  My page setup is in inches, so that's my first guess.  But basically, if I'm using 6" text, we want the ticks and arrowheads to be about the same size.  So should I make a 6X6 rectangle and size the tick to that?  I'm assuming when creating the block I should center it at 0,0 in the coordinates?  This is a wblock, correct?

And then, I spent some time fooling around with creating the blocks, but when trying to implement them in the dimstyle, is seemed to interrupt or make breaks in the dimension lines. 

Basically, you're welcome to treat me as if I'm stupid, and if you'd have the time to walk me step-by-step through how you would do it, I'd buy you a couple beers if I could.  Thanks for your help so far as well.

[David_W_Koch]

If you take a look at the out-of-the-block _ArchTick block, which is the block AutoCAD will generate if it is not already defined in your drawing file and you choose Architectural Tick and the arrow in a dimension style, in a drawing started without a template in Imperial units, you will find that the block has its insertion point at the mid point of a polyline that has a global width of 0.15 units.  Relative to the insertion point, the first vertex is at -0.5,-0.5 and the second vertex is at 0.5,0.5 (lower left to upper right, for world coordinate system, top view direction, plan orientation (postitve x axis to the right, positive y axis to the top, positive z axis perpendicular to the screen, toward you).

For a drawing started without a template in Metric units, the setup is similar, with a width of 3.81 units (25.4 * 0.15) and vertices at -12.7,-12.7 and 12.7,12.7.

So you could use the out-of-the-box block for your horizontal dimension style, and create a new block with a polyline of the same width and vertices, relative to the insertion point, of -0.5,0.5 and 0.5,-0.5 (Imperial) or -12.7,12.7 and 12.7,-12.7 (Metric) (upper left to lower right), and then assign that as the User Arrow in your vertical dimension style.

The out-of-the-box tick block is not annotative, so I would assume that your custom block should also be non-annotative.  (Annotativity would be assigned at the Dimension Style level, not to the assigned arrow blocks.)

If your boss prefers upper left to lower right for the horizontal dimensions, then use the out-of-the-box _ArchTick for the vertical dimension style and the custom block for the horizontal dimension style.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Should have tried that out completely before posting:  when using the out-of-the-box _ArchTick block, AutoCAD "knows" that you are using a tick, and, on the Lines tab of the Dimension style, the Extend beyond ticks property is on and active.  When specifying a User Arrow, this property is grayed out and any residual value is not applied.  This will leave the dimension line short of the extension line, as well.  You will need to add a horizontal line of a length that is based on the arrow size you normally specify for tick marks and the extend beyond tick value you normally specify.

My firm's standard dimension style (Imperial units) uses 1/16" for both the tick size and the extension beyond ticks value, so in the custom tick block, a line from -1,0 to 1,0 (relative to the insertion point) provides the equivalent.  All items in the block should be on Layer 0, with Color, Linetype, Plot Style (if you use named/STB plot styles) and Lineweight set to ByBlock.  If your extension beyond ticks value is not the same as your extension beyond ticks value, then you will need to adjust the -1,0 point proportionately.  (If tick size in 1/16" but extension beyond is 1/32", then use -0.5,0; if tick size is 1/16" but extension beyond is 1/8", then use -2,0.)

If using metric units and the tick size and extension beyond tick values are the same, the line should run from -25.4,0 to 25.4,0, with a similar adjustment to the first point if the tick size and extension beyond tick values are not the same.

[jmldg]

David, thank you sincerely for all of your help.  I feel like this is getting a lot closer: size of tick and making the block is working just fine.  The last hurdle is the extension beyond the tick lines.  I don't know if maybe I have an incorrect box checked when making the block (block is non-annotative as suggested), or what.  What I'm left with is this:

In the dimstyle settings, once I choose my user arrow "liesl", the ability to check the box and alter the extension beyond tick marks goes away.  The field just goes grey.  Even if I then change it from liesl to something else, the field is still grey.  I have to back all the way out of the dimstyle settings to be able to take a look again. 

As always, any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Best,

Liesl

[jmldg]

I should have kept trying as well.  So, if I set up the extension *before* I block the tick, then select the user tick, it still greys out the extension box, but the number inside of the box stays the same.  It does not, however, extend the friggin line.  If I then change the "liesl" tick to something else, without having changed the value of the extension line (because at that point I can't), then the extension lines show up in the dimensions again.  Switch it back to "liesl" and the extension lines get suppressed.

I don't know why my block would be suppressing the extension lines but that seems to be the case at the moment.  I have some unexpected free time at work right now, so I'm going to keep fiddling.

[David_W_Koch]

Take a look at post 10 in this thread.  It explains that the Extend beyond ticks property appears only to be active and used when the default _ArchTick arrow is selected.  I could not find a way to tell the dimension style that my User Arrow was a tick.  The solution, as noted in post 10, is to add a horizontal line to the custom User Arrow block.  The dimension line will be held back "one unit" from the intersection of the extension line and the dimension line, so the right endpoint of the horizontal line needs to be at 1,0, relative to the block insertion point.  The left endpoint of the horizontal line depdends upon how far past the extension line you want it to go.  As I noted, my firm has it extend the same amount as the arrow size, so to do that, it should start at -1,0 (one unit).  See the drawing in the attached zip file for a working example, in imperial units.

There is an instance of the custom User Arrow block used by the Vertical Tick dimension style inserted at 0,0, along with several dimensions.  The horizontal dimension and the right vertical dimension use the Horizontal Tick dimension style, which uses the out-of-the-box _ArchTick arrow.  The left vertical dimension uses the Vertical Tick dimension style, which uses the custom _ArchTick2_I block as the User Arrow.