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Manually set Drawing dimensions

Manually set Drawing dimensions

When a drawing dimension is manually changed, as can be done to remove unwanted decimal places or to simply to tidy up a drawing, or make a dimension appear as you want, it would be great to have that manual dimension text changed to a different color on screen. However when printed out or converted to a PDF it would appear in the default color.

 

The problem is, that manually set dimensions do not update with model changes. This way if you ever need to go back and change an existing design at a later date, you can instantly see which dimensions you have set yourself, and that need to be changed manually by you, or reset back to automatic. I have been in this situation before where I have had to manually change a dimension for some reason, and months later edited the model for another reason and accidentally sent out new drawings with a wrong measurement, because it had been manually set and not picked up.

 

In a large set of drawings it could take hours to go through every measurement to find one that you have set manually.

2 Comments
swalton
Mentor

This issue is why we fire employees who manually override dimensions on parametric drawings.  

 

Inventor has a built in selection filter to find dimensions that have been manually overridden.

Workflow:

Press the Shift key and the Right Mouse Button in a drawing.  You will see a new set of selection filters.  One of them is: "Select all Overridden Dimensions".  Left Click on that item, and Inventor will select all the dimensions in the drawing that have been overridden.  

 

Note that this does not apply to setting the displayed tolerance in a drawing dimension.  It only applies to dimensions that are lies.  (no, I don't have very strong feelings about overridden dimensions. Why do you ask? 😁)

 

 

Hi,

 

I can Remember that for these cases the dimension should by having underline. Like 1234. This is allowed according drawing rule if I can remember correctly.

But I fully agree with @swalton !

 

Regards,

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