I work for a construction company, using Layout as the primary drafting program. I’ve been using the program for a little over a year and can’t find a way to get this to work probably, so I’m hoping you all can help.
So whenever working inside of a scaled drawing, (1:12, 1:8, etc.) and I edit a line, arc, or poly that has a dimension measuring some part or all of the line, the dimension, even if I manually change the dimension to the same number, changes to what the measurement would be OUTSIDE of the scale I’m working in.
This has cost me a lot of time and has come very close to costing my company a lot of money. (Ordering a 3/8" part instead of a 3" part because of Auto-correct essentially)
Is there any way to have all measurements be manual, force a scale on the entire document, or some way to make them not change when I edit the line they are on?
Thanks in advance to all.
You need to make sure both ends of the dimension remain linked to the line. When an end of the dimension becomes disconnected, the dimension reverts to paper space.
Example 1.layout (8.4 KB)
if I cut this object in any point along the line, it resets all of the dimensions to the page default. They are all measuring points along the line that even if the cut is outside of their measurements, they still revert to page default.
(I just pulled this from a part being designed. Some of the dimensions aren’t there, but the troublesome ones are.)
So what usually happens is I will draw an object and they will revise a dimension, and instead of starting the drawing over, I will cut or extend the line to make it match what they want, but the dimensions will change.
For example, here’s that example drawing after adding a bottom post to this object.
My process to get to this point was to draw in the bottom segment, then cut at the edge of the object so that there is a small line that overlaps both parts that I delete. It is when I CUT the line out of both parts that the dimensions reset. But even if I draw a dimension over the existing dimension (which shows the correct distance, because it’s in the scale), the second dimension is correct, even though it’s measuring the same object.
So if I understand what you’re saying correctly, those dimensions aren’t measuring the line because I cut a different section of the line?
If that’s the issue, would a solution (Albeit an annoying one), would be to set my paper size to something large enough so that 1:1 scale would be big enough to fit the drawing, then scale it when printing.
I wouldn’t use that as an actual solution, I’m just trying to understand why the program does this, as it didn’t initially make sense to me.
I guess you could draw everything at 1:1 but that seems like a bit of excess screwing around. The thing is, when you cut the line, you are making two new lines where there had been one.
I’m a little confused on your dimensioning in that last file. Your dimension isn’t actually linked to the detail you are showing the dimension for.
What is this thing? Is 1/16 in. precision adequate?
I thought that If I cut a polyline at one point, it is technically still one line, because the endpoints are in the same place. Am I incorrect in this thinking? And I have to cut the line to create a gap to add the bottom segment of the post.
What do you mean by linked? If I draw a poly, measure part of it, then cut a different part of the poly, the dimension of the measured part shouldn’t change. That’s the behavior I’m expecting from the program. Am I wrong here?
I have it set to 16th accuracy because that is the smallest measurement that they will be using in the field. (Some of these are field cut by installers) No real reason to have any smaller precision.
