Guide Entity Info

When I create a guide, say between two center points, and I select it, it would be really nice if Entity Info would show the distance.


I know I can simply take the tape measure and measure the guide again or use the line tool and check the measurements box in the lower right corner, but it seems like we could eliminate a step here by retaining a little bit of info on a guide that has a finite distance.
There’s also the dimension tool, which almost solves this problem, but adds its own by having this callout cluttering up my model.

The same goes for the text/note tool, and that still won’t list the distance if I try to attach it to the guide. It just gives me info about the center points.

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In the implementation, there appears to be a clash of notions about what a guide point represents and is meant to be used for.

On the one hand, as you observe, Entity Info doesn’t really tell you anything useful about the guide point - not even its end position coordinates. Even the Ruby API only exposes the end position. So, the developers evidently regarded it as nothing more than a position marker that you could use for further inferences.

Yet, the GUI displays a “tail” leading back to the position from which you started drawing the guide point. That clearly says the back-end structure includes the start point as well as the end point since otherwise there would be no way to draw the tail. It isn’t clear to me what the developers intended you to do with the tail that justified presenting it in the model view. The only function I know it serves is that you can click on it to select the guide point, which is a tiny amount easier than clicking on the guide point itself or dragging a selection box around it.

In any case, the required data to calculate a distance is clearly present in the underlying data, so this request is technically feasible. However, unless a lot of people get behind this request, I really doubt it will ever get enough priority to be implemented.

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Cluttering the model with callouts? It depends a bit on how carefully you create your dimensions.
Dimensions can be anchored directly on circle centers (running from center to center) without guidepoints.
Some examples:

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