This is the first article in a series of four articles. F-R-E-E. Written by Jos van Doorn. To get the other
articles. Send a blank e-mail to: mailto:dim@aweber.com
I guess you already know about drawing dimensions. There are a lot of dimensions you can draw in AutoCAD. But new features have been added.
Today I’m going to talk about the arc length feature. You can measure the length of an arc. Using a
dimension.
Suppose we have an arc in a drawing. And we want to measure the length of the arc. We want to add the
length to the drawing.
This is how we do it. We click on Dimension in the menu bar and on Arc Length in the pull down menu. This
prompt is displayed:
Select arc or polyline arc segment:
We select the arc that we have got. After the selection of the arc this prompt is displayed:
Specify arc length dimension, or [Mtext/Texct/Angle/Partial/Leader]:
Between the square brackets are the options that we’ve got. I’m not going into the options. I just want to
pick a point for the arc length dimension.
As I move the cursor. You can see that the length is already displayed. There is number. And there is also a
symbol. The arc length symbol.
I must tell something more. I must tell about the number and I must tell about the arc symbol. We can
change it if we want.
Open the Dimension Style Manager. We can create out own dimension style or we can modify the existing dimension
style.
Let’s modify the existing dimension style. We click on the Modify button. The Modify Dimension Style dialog
box is displayed.
The dialog box has got seven tabs. We click on the Arrows and Symbols tab. Now we can set how the arc
length symbol is displayed.
In the dialog box is the Arc length symbol area. In the area there are three options. The following three
options:
- Preceding dimension text
- Above dimension text
- None
You can have the arc length symbol placed before the length of the arc. Or preceding the length of the arc.
Or you can have it above the length of the arc.
You can also select that no arc length symbol is displayed.
The number gives the length of the arc. We can do something with the number of decimals in the length.
Click on the Primary Units tab.
You’ll find the Linear dimensions area. Behind Precision you can set what precision is to be used. No
decimal places or a number of places.
The units of the length. That depends on what units have been selected for the drawing. You could change it
over the Units command.
This is what I wanted to say about the arc length feature of the dimensions command. Next I would like to
talk about jogged dimensions.
About the author: Jos van Doorn. Has written many AutoCAD articles. Find them here:http://autocad-articles.blogspot.com/
