Dimension between two surfaces more difficult now

Technical Problems SketchUp
1

I’ve been using sketchup 8 for a long time. I just got started on 2015 and it seems that the dimension tool has been changed a bit. Instead of letting you grab just any intersection of two lines, it grabs the entire line or shape. This is seems to be making some explicit measurements a lot more difficult.

For example, I’ve made a simple cylinder by extruding a circle. When using the dimension tool to measure the cylinder’s height, the tool locks onto the circular edge of the the top surface instead of grabbing a point on the edge of the circle like it would have done in sketchup 8. How can I measure from a point on the edge of the circle to a point on the opposite circle without doing one of the following:

  1. Drawing a line between the two points you’d like to measure, then dimension that.
  2. Grab the edge of a cylinder (the hidden geometry of the curved surface).
1 Like
2

In the case of the cylinder you could try this:

Shep

3

Thanks for the tip!

What shortcut are you using to make the hidden geometry visible?
Is the old way of grabbing any arbitrary point to point dimension gone?

4

I have “H” shortcut as the toggle for hidden geometry. I think it’s the default.

Well you can explode one of the circles and start the dimension from one of the endpoints.

Shep

5

H appears to be the Hand tool in my setup, that’s an easy fix. I figured that exploding would work. I’ve also found that drawing a short line from a point on the circle will allow me to grab that point quite easily.

I appreciate your help on this.

Completely off topic: Is there an extension or simple tool that you have allows you to make the gif instruction that you used in your first response?

6

It’s an app called gifcam.

Gifcam

Shep

1 Like
7

You can also create a screencast using the screenr website and then upload the product to this forum or other web locations.

8

There is no default for this, but H is a perfect choice since anyone should use the hand tool (standard H shortcut). :wink:

9

On a good day I can remember a few of my custom shortcuts, never mind the defaults.

1 Like
10

Oy … isn’t that the truth!

Plugin: Print Shortcuts aka printkeys.rb by our friend Jim

A simpler one:
shortcutsV2.rb (118 Bytes)