Expert: Bill DeShawn - 8/26/2008

Question
Hello Bill,

I have been working with Autocad for years. My first experience was at school with Rel. 12.
Since then I have been working with every release, sometimes skipping one.

Now I have been using AutoCAD 2008 for a while and I keep running in to the same problem. I never experienced this problem in the previous versions.

When I want to fit a big 1:1 scale modelspace part or drawing in paperspace, I usually divide it in to multiple scaled (1:2, 1:5 or 1:10 etc...) viewports, showing only the relevant parts of the part or drawing.
When I want to dimension the total length of the object, the dimension text shows the length of the paperspace distance, nog the actutal length of the object in modelspace.
When I dimension a piece of the object, in a single viewport the dimensions display the actual size.

Now I have to override all the "multiple viewport" dimensions. This takes more time and I can easily miss one wich leads to confusion.

The DIMASSOC variable is set to <2>

I must be missing another variable setting wich causes this, but I cant find it. In the previous releases this missing setting was probably always on by default...?

Thanks in advance,

Jeroen

Answer
Jeroen.  I have racked my brain, tried everything I can think of to make this work and it just does not.  I don't know what the circumstances were when it worked for you, but I've posed this question in a newsgroup where lots of knowledgeable AutoCAD users exchange ideas.  Everyone says you can't do it.  There are work-arounds however.  They would include dimensioning in model space and using two viewports to break it up.  A break-line can be used in paper space between the dimensions in the viewports to make it appear as one dimension.

Sorry I don't have better news.

Keep in touch
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn