Show a Scale in Model

[jparks_79]

Morning Team 😁

I am creating some screenshot images to share with my manufacturing team and customer for a project we are working on. I thought it would be useful to show a scale in the model space to give son context to the size of the components. Its difficult to see how large things are just from a jpg. Has anyone seen a feature like that? I picture a steel rule with imperial or metric marks either on the side of the window by the ucs or even a moveable object. Or even something similar that can be found on a map?

I thought I recall seeing something like this, but maybe it was another application.

Thanks!

Jeremy

[Ray_Feiler]

How about something like this?

[jparks_79]

Hi Ray,

Basically yes. That is what I would be looking for. Do you know if there is something like this in inventor that can just be displayed? Like "Display Rule" or "Display Scale" in the modeling space?

[Ray_Feiler]

Not that I'm aware of, but it's a good suggestion.

[Frederick_Law · Accepted solution]

Put iMike in the assembly.

[brad]

One "kinda sorta" built-in way to get an idea of scale is to change the lighting style to "empty lab",  "country road", or a few others that have pictures. You may need to change the "set current view as top" to get things oriented, and also change from ortho to perspective view for best results.  Not sure if there is a way to use custom pictures though.

But usually I use iMike as suggested, and for smaller objects  a  model of a human hand I found on Grabcad.

[swalton]

I add a 3d Annotation to show key dimensions in a screenshot of a model.

[jparks_79]

Thanks guys. I think iMike should do the trick. I found another post which had the assembly. I would like to mention that I also tried the "3DA" idea. The issue I have with 3da, I have not found a good way to dimension a Diameter from the side so the height can also be shown. For example, if you were to model a simple tube, I have not found a way to show the diameteric dimensions and Height dimensions on the same annotation plane. The diameter dimension is liking to be planar to the diametric surface. While in a typical drawing, you can show a diameter via a leader dimension style or via a linear dimension style.