Expert: Bob - 2/9/2008

Question
Hello. I am a drafter for a woodworker of cabinets. I studied architectural drafting about 13 years ago and am just reentering the practice of drafting.
I downloaded an AutoCAD drawing for a bracket from a companies website. When I copied it into my drawing I lost control of changing the dimension text height. I can change all other features like arrow size, line weight and precision.

Thank You

Adam

Answer
Adam --- bad boy! You dont give the AutoCAD release, and you don't indicate your AutoCAD training. I hope you are not stepping into the swamp of figuring it out on your own: that's what books are for.

In this case, I would almost always re-dimension the object in the dimstyle that I use -- if you copied in the object and its dimensions, the vendor's dimstyle would come in too.  If I had a small number of dimensions WHICH ARE NEVER CHANGING AGAIN with which I had problems, I would explode those dimesions and change the text height, even though I should, to be perfect, figure out the problem in its entirety.

In other words -- if only my company is using the drawing file, I am going to use quick "fudges" to make it work for plotting and move on. If another party is going to get the electronic file, I can't send it to them with any cheats that will mess them up. (so for the bracket, I might explode the dims, fix the text height, and make a block of the dimensioned bracket)

If I had your problem constantly, I would look for a general cure. Otherwise, you must do what will work quickly and move on.

Does that help?

BOB