Dimensioning in idw

I've posted this as a wish-list item, but we know it could take years for it to be implemented.

As a company, we use a straight-curved-straight i-beam where holes in the curve are measured up the inner flange, then offset a certain distance. This makes an easy surface for the shop guys to run their tape measure along. I've been using arc length formulae to locate the hole with an angle and construction curve, so the model is right.

The problem comes when we put the information on an idw. There's no way to dimension the length of the curve to a point plus the length of the straight, and a programmer told us that the mechanics for it are deep in the core of inventor, and they can't make a vb program to help us. We finally decided on a standard of overriding angle dimensions with the value we wanted, from the parameters if possible.

Here we find another problem. Our shop needs its information in fractions of inches (typically to the nearest 1/8"), and we don't trust them to make a conversion from decimal to fraction on their own. Parameters will only place in text as decimal values, regardless of their custom property format setting, which limits us to using whole inch values and suppressing precision, or typing in values manually. The latter has suffered from both typos and from not updating automatically, and has cost the company more than we'd like.

Does anyone have a solution to the above problems?

Have you tried Retrieving Dimensions? If it works to your design intent in the models, then when you bring in dimensions you can use a different dimension style to convert them to Fractional units.

I gave retrieve dimensions a shot, but all I can get it to bring in is the angle that I used to locate the hole. The inch value I need is a user parameter that is used to calculate the angle.

I don't think it's the solution I'm looking for, but it's a good thought and it might prove useful in other applications. Thank you.

Can you post a file?

I've attached a zip file with an ipt and an idw file. It's a mock-up of what we do with a couple of additional leader notes from me.

I think what irks me the most is that I can have the value and formatting I want as the length in the parts list, but not as a dimension. So close, and yet so far...

I am not sure I understand this fully, but is this something you can use?

Thanks for taking a look and offering suggestions, Bunny, but I don't think we can use that either. Too much potential for magnification of errors; it's why we have the shop measure from the same fixed point (base of beam) every time.