Expert: Bill DeShawn - 2/26/2004

Question
We are trying to dimension an auxilary view
which is rotated at an angle close to 60 degrees.
We would like to use ordinate dimensioning and not use the dim align command. We also would like to keep the dimaso on. When we keep the dimaso on the ordinate dimension lines stay parallel to horizontal. We can change the text angle so that the text will be parallel with the view, but the dimension lines stay horizontal. We know we can cut the dimaso off and rotate view till its 90 degrees and use ordinate dimension then rotate back but we loose the associative command.  We are currently using AutoCad 2004. If you have any suggestions please let us know.

Thanks,
Raymond Morris
Design Engineer

Answer
Raymond:  When creating ordinate dimensions I'm sure you know that this type of dimension is closely tied the the current UCS.  The ordinate dimension lines are ALWAYS parallel to the X and Y axis of the current UCS.  Regardless of how you rotate the text, you are NOT going to get the dimension line to do anything different.  Even though CAD is powerful, it isn't all-powerful (and never will be).  It is however getting much more expensive. :(

There is another alternative to DIMALIGN.  And that is DIMROTATED.  It's better even though you have a little more clicking to do if you want to pick your angle, because if you use a rotated dimension as opposed to an aligned dimension, the angle of the dimension doesn't change when you stretch the dimension.  The dimension angle will instead remain constant regardless of where the definition point ends up.  You can use a command alias in ACAD.PGP such as DRO for DIMROTATED.  DR is DRAWORDER by default.

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