Dimension of irregularly shapled polyline.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am looking to annotate a drawing of newly laid water mains on a new housing development and our client needs the pipe lengths to be annotated on the As Laid drawing. The mains are drawn using polylines, however these are often irregularly shaped, i.e. curved.  I already know how to apply linear dimensions but not a way of doing so for a curved polyline.

I am hoping that someone will be able to suggest a way to add dimensions that run parallel to a curve rather then showing linear measurements.

I have attached a sketch highlighting the information that I require (in green).

[h_s_walker]

Welcome to the Forums

Do you have the menu bar showing? If so click on DIMENSION. One of the items is ARC LENGTH Or at the command line type DIMARC

[Anonymous]

Hi hwalker,

Thanks for the quick response to my question.

Unfortunately I am having some trouble making this work for me. I believe that the problem is my polyline arcs are technically just msaller straight lines, obviously this is something I can change in order to use DIMARC.

However I was hoping that I could apply the dimension of both the curve AND a straight section in one measurement. I know that using the LIST command will give the total length of a polyline so what I was really hoping for was a line running parallel to the polyline with the total length annotated.  Does this make sense?

Thanks,

~Nick

[h_s_walker · Accepted solution]

Please read the following thread

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2010-2011-2012/arc-angle-and-length-is-different-why/m-p/56731...

As you will note I told the OP that field codes were the way to go. This would seem to be the same as what you want.

Where I tell him to choose ARC LENGTH. you just need to find the item which says LENGTH

[Anonymous]

Thank you, that's really useful. Hopefully this will appease our overly demanding customer.