You can use DimPoly.lsp, available >>here<<. It could be adjusted easily enough to do only two sides of a rectangle, if it otherwise does what you want. See other Posts on that thread for certain possibilities, and other code. Also consider such things as using a Dimension Style with extension and dimension lines suppressed if all you want to see is the distance text part, etc.
Kent Cooper, AIA 
@Anonymous wrote:
.... How could I modify the LISP to remove those two sides, when I only want just the height and width?
If you don't care which two consecutive edges get dimensioned, and you plan to use it only on rectangles, I think you could just change this line:
(repeat (setq inc (fix (vlax-curve-getEndParam pl)))
to this:
(repeat (setq inc 2)
It could also be simplified in a lot of other ways, particularly eliminating its accounting for arc segments, coincident vertices, open-vs-closed Polylines, and so on, but those elements won't hurt if left in, even if they're not used.
If the particular edges dimensioned matter, it could probably be made to figure out where it is, and only do whichever you want [for example, the left and bottom edges]. But that raises the question of whether the rectangles are always orthogonally oriented. If not, there would need to be some criterion developed for which two edges to do, when a rectangle is at some oddball angle.
Kent Cooper, AIA
Accepted solution
@Anonymous wrote:
... it was placed very close to the rectangle (3/16"), almost overlapping it. How could I go about modifying the LISP routine to make that distance further?
That's determined as a proportion of the text height, by this line:
(* styht 1.5); distance
so if you change that 1.5 to something larger, they'll be farther away.
Kent Cooper, AIA
Hi Kentcooper,
Your autolisp very useful, but if i only want to use your autolisp for only dimension line and no need dimension aligned, how i can modify it ? Thank you so much
@Anonymous wrote:
.... if i only want to use your autolisp for only dimension line and no need dimension aligned, how i can modify it ? ....
That's actually quite a bit more complicated than you might think, but probably possible -- I'll have to think about it. In the meantime, the QDIM command can do much of what you want, though you'll need to run it four times on each Polyline, and it will make more Dimensions than in your image examples, because [for example] its left-side Dimension string will pick up vertices along the right side. But if you can [even temporarily, and re-join later] Explode the Polylines into Lines, you could get QDIM to do exactly what you want. And it has the advantage of not having extension lines overlapping orthogonal edges.
Kent Cooper, AIA
Looking at the image again, I have some questions.
You have a second overall Dimension on the right end of the bottom right figure, but no other overalls along sides with more than one Dimension. I assume that's because there's no single edge on either end of the figure to Dimension that overall height along. It would be a serious challenge to figure out how to instruct a routine to determine that. Is the overall Dimension something you would want the routine to draw, rather than putting it in yourself where needed?
Many of your strings of multiple Dimensions along the same side are continuous, but some are stepped. Is that a matter of how crowded the text is between the extension lines on the ones that are stepped? Again, telling a routine how to figure that out, and what to do about it, would be difficult.
Would you ever have a concave situation such as this?
How should that be handled?
Not really a routine's problem, but a question of how you draw and how you define your Dimension Style: I notice that the Polylines are not drawn with precision and the Dimensions are rounded, because [upper-right figure] 377 + 99 does not equal 475.
Kent Cooper, AIA
Dear @Kent1Cooper ,
I have a question about a way to automatically dimension polyline with coordinate dimensions. Is that possible? If the same dimensions were shown on the right / left and top / bottom, this is not a problem for me, I can simply power-delete some dimensions.
An sample :
Many thanks in advance
@Anonymous wrote:
Dear @Kent1Cooper ,
I have a question about a way to automatically dimension polyline with coordinate dimensions. ....
[I defer to your other specific-to-this-question thread. Not that I have a solution there, but anyway.... And just to be nit-picky, they're called Ordinate (not Coordinate) Dimensions.]
Kent Cooper, AIA
