Adjust angle precision on quick measure

[Anonymous]

I really like the quick measure command, except when lines almost are parallell or perpendicular to each other. I do not know why the lines not are exactly parallell but it is enough for me, but not for the quick measure command. Is there a setting to adjust the precision in AutoCAD to tolerate some minimal error and approximate as if the lines would be parallell? In this case the error is 0.0000057°. You see in the picture the horizontal measure is 450, but the vertical is not showing at all. The upper angles are showing whith decimals, but the lower not at all. The bold white numbers are with dimensions, the yellow small digits is the quick measure tool.

AutoCAD 2021, Windows 10

[imadHabash]

Hi,

The distance between two objects is measured only if the objects are parallel. also you can from UNITS command control precision . 

[RobDraw]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I do not know why the lines not are exactly parallell but it is enough for me, but not for the quick measure command.

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You have to make a choice. Either draw more accurately or use another method for distance measuring.

[jeff.lentz]

You can set up dimensions with a rounding precision for this purpose, but the measurement tool should not be able to produce anything other than a 100% correct measurement. You wouldn't stretch a tape measure or ruler, nor should the measurement tool be "fudgeable". I strongly recommend you dig into the reason why your parallel lines aren't. You may think you had a snap turned on and it wasn't. You might have some out-of-plane features (z direction) that you were unaware of. You may have imported content from a source that didn't translate accurately, but you need to know that.

There are a whole host of other fixes the Autodesk community would like implemented before asking Autodesk to make the measurement tool provide inaccurate results.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answers! Unfortunately, it is a colleague who starts the cad models from many different old templates with these small errors, and I complete the drawings, so the errors will recur time and time again, even if I adjust them on the current drawing. Then I simply have to live with the problem.

[RobDraw]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Then I simply have to live with the problem.

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No you don't. Go to the source. Fix the bad CAD. Problem solved.

[jeff.lentz]

It's not always that simple, in reality. I managed to get a faulty leader line format corrected on a CAD template for a 40k employee global corporation after many years of dealing with having to fix it on every single drawing of theirs that I edited, and then when they released the next version of the template, they'd copied the flaw back in from an older version. I feel your pain.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately I can't fix AutoCAD, that must Autodesk do!

[Anonymous]

Yes, it is the same here, hundreds of different cad-files and thousands of non parallell lines.

[RobDraw]

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@jeff.lentz wrote:
It's not always that simple, in reality. 

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It is that simple, when you know how. Management getting in the way is a different topic.

[RobDraw]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Unfortunately I can't fix AutoCAD, that must Autodesk do!

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Bad CAD is not an Autodesk problem, it's a user issue.

[RobDraw]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Yes, it is the same here, hundreds of different cad-files and thousands of non parallell lines.

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And you keep using them?

Do you know that it takes more time to fix things over and over again than it does to redo them correctly?

[Kent1Cooper]

There are routines out there to fix such irregularities.  Search here and in the Customization Forum for "QUANTIZE" for things to force all Line endpoints and Polyline vertices and Circle/Arc centers and Text insertion points and so on to the nearest location with coordinates that are a whole multiple of whatever small increment gets you the results you need, as well as Circle/Arc radii to whole multiples, etc.  My version is >here<, but there are others.  Such a routine is not going to cure everything [for example, the ends of a Line may straddle a half-way-between coordinate value in such a way that one end will be rounded up and the other down], but it should simplify the task.  Some routines force coordinates, but I think there are others that force "clean" angles of things, at least for Line objects if not other kinds.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

These issues are very dependent on what is being drawn but if lines are supposed to be parallel and aren't, then that is just bad drafting, not the fault of AutoCAD.  AutoCAD provides many tools to ensure accuracy.

If most of the linework should be at angles that can be rounded off, such as for much architectural work, then orthomode, polarmode and ucs can provide all the control necessary, along with object snaps to provide the needed accuracy.  Even if drawn poorly, it is possible to fix some work by using Autoconstrain along with appropriate angular and distance tolerances. The two screencasts below show how to cleanup most of the problems.  Adding angular constraints should be able to get the rest done.

 For roughly orthographic shapes

 For roughly parallel lines

[Anonymous]

Thanks! It works good enough for me. I work with buildings. I use polar tracking and object snap when I draw but the problem is mostly with old lines. I have a colleague who has AutoCAD LT, do you know a similiar command in AutoCAD LT? I cannot find autoconstrain there.

[RobDraw]

I thought you were just going to live with the bad CAD.

[dbroad]

No, not AFAIK.  Full AutoCAD has it's perks.

[jeff.lentz]

(Mentor) status must be based on the quantity, rather than the quality, of posts. 😉

[RobDraw]

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@jeff.lentz wrote:
(Mentor) status must be based on the quantity, rather than the quality, of posts. 😉

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Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. Did I say something you didn't like? I ask because people like you start throwing around insults when something I say makes them realize their own errors.