Help with Autocad

Hi,

I have been trying this out with AutoCAD Mechanical 2007 and I can't get it to do what you are asking for. I would guess from this, based on previous experience of LT, that if Acad Mech won't do it, then LT won't either.

If I may offer a work-around: This is a precise zoom that you are using, so you could draw box on a unique layer that duplicates the zoomed view, dimension to the box, then switch off the box layer in the layout.

What version of LT are you using? The latest versions of Acad have vastly improved paper space dimensioning capability.

I hope that this is of some help.

Drew

Sometimes LT does seem to give obscure Osnaps and in frustration I zoom out and back in with the wheel on the mouse. If you zoomed out just a tad would the osnap you want appear. Maybe not a solution to your problem but it eases my frustration somewhat.

As for experience, I tried to teach myself Autocad and found it very labour intensive and hard. Then I did a night class which was 36 hours over a period of 3 months and I learned more in that class than I would have in years of self teaching. With someone on hand to answer these types of questions right away you really do learn quickly.

Good luck

Yes, AutoCAD can be quite tricky at times. I don't totally understand your question but I do agree with one of the answers to draw a box (or a line), get your dimension and then turning the layer off or even deleting the box.

Most of the time, there are multiple ways to do things for autoCAD and different people will do things different ways.

As far as learning AutoCAD, the best way is to get experience. And ask questions to other users that are in your work environment. Let someone sit down with your drawing and watch how they do things when you are stuck. It is amazing how much you can pick up on things that other people do. Most of the time you will say "Oh, it was that easy???"

Ah, I think I see what you're saying. (Sorry about last post).

Have you tried the snap to nearest button. Right click on any toolbar and activate the object snap toolbar. Use the tempory osnap called snap to nearest which will track a line up to the edge of your viewport.

Hope this makes more sense and will help.

All the best and please post another comment if I have again missed the point.

snap to intersection won't work in your case because the viewport and object lines do not intersect, i.e. it will snap to an intersection of 2 lines in modelspace or 2 lines in paperspace but not to one line in each. The suggestion to make a seperate layer box in model space that's the same as the viewport box is probably the best bet.

Another more simple way is to put vertices in the places on the line that you would like to dimension and then it will work everytime.

Hello Astur,

I think the bigger question is why would you ever want to do as you descibe? But if you must get the view to match the dimension....do it the other way around. Place your dimension in model space and then you can stretch your viewport in paperspace and snap it to the dimension.

Hhmmm....I'm still trying to figure out why you would do it....:)

Try setting your Osnap the "Apparent intersection", this option is available in 2006 but I'm not sure of earlier versions. Also be sure to have "mid point" turned off otherwise it will try to snap to it first.

I think others would agree though, you should use model space for dimensioning.

My thanks to everybody that responded to my question. I have tried adding a line(s) fractionally inboard of the viewport lines, these are on a non-plotable layer - as first suggested by ad016. On a high screen zoom Autocad is quite good at recognising these 'generated' intersections and picks them up for dimensions - I then zoom down the screen view in order to place the dimension (of course this is outside the viewport).

My thanks again - but wouldn't it be nice if Autodesk fixed it seeing as how books on Autocad make a great play of dimensioning in paper space!!

Regards, Astur.

If I understand your question correctly this may help.

Stretch the VP to extend past the intended osnap point, then place the dimension.

Next stretch the VP back to its original size or location. The new dim stays associated to the osnap point eventhough it is not within the VP anymore.

To learn acad check out as many user forums as possible, you'll pretty much get an answer to any question you have. However I would do a search for keywords that pertain to your question before you post a topic. People on forums don't like to help people that are to lazy to help themselves(i.e. do there work for them).

Good luck!