Monday, August 3, 2009

Tips for dimensioning in SketchUp

I was visiting the SketchUp Community Forums the other day and noticed a few tips pertaining to dimensions. They were shared by bert and thomthom (a couple of the resident SketchUp gurus). I thought these nuggets of information were great, so I created a quick tutorial video that explains things. Here's what I cover:
  1. Setting up SketchUp dimensions using the "Hide when foreshortened" option. Using this option allows you an easy way to set up your scenes with the dimensions you want to view while hiding the ones you don't. It's all done without the use of layers or individual visibility settings.
  2. Adding text to the dimension string without losing the dimension's dynamic behavior.



Thank you bert and thomthom for supporting the SketchUp community.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for that Chris. The ability to maintain dynamic dimensions like that is something I didn't know before.

    SketchUp keeps revealing more interesting secrets...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris, I appreciate your tutorial. It would be grate to add to your video the tip of associate two leader lines to one text, I also copy from a Guru that I forget his name: this is the procedure: 1. with the leader tool select your object (surface, line, point,...); 2. erase the text; 3. Select the leader line; 4. copy from edit/copy menu or from the copy icon; 5. paste in place from edit/copy in place menu 6. With the leader line selected, select the leader tool and click in the leader arrow, without release the mouse, move the line to the new position; 7. you have to leader and you can do tex edit to introduce your text.


    Tanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. There is a minor bug in the voice-over for this tutorial. Near the very end of the section on adding text to a dimension string, the narrator says that a line break can be entered using a "forward slash" followed by "n". What he actually types, and what works, it a BACK slash. Maybe this was his first tutorial and he was nervous, but someone should have "proof read" this before it went out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great tip! Thanks lots.
    Nitpick :) this character "\" I think is called BACK SLASH, not FORWARD SLASH.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chris, my support is so little compare to what Gaieus, Jean Lemire and many others bring to this forum.

    I have learned a lot from this forum

    ReplyDelete
  6. In Layout you can place dimension onto the surface based on the model underneath.

    However when you change the model, the dimensions dont change.

    According to google demos they should but it does not work basically.

    Its a pity because having the dimension in "paper space" ensures that they are typfe face sized to the paper output, which makes the drawings much more understand and look better

    ReplyDelete

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