Parallel lines will not dimension

[mmiles]

See attached. Two lines which appear to be parallel based on angles will not dimension with linear dimension. What's up with that? I cannot figure out what the problem is.

[jsteinhauer]

See attached. Two lines which appear to be parallel based on angles will not dimension with linear dimension. What's up with that? I cannot figure out what the problem is.

Double check your units rounding. Make sure it is at 1/256. Then if all of that is happy, select a line then when the angular dimension becomes editable select it and see if it is truly 90 deg. Repeat as required.

Crank units!!!

Jeff S.

[cliff collins]

I suspect that the dimension's witness lines are snapping to the reference plane(s)
and not the actual lines.

Turn off the ref. planes and then dimension, or vice versa--turn off the lines
and dim. the ref. planes.

Is your dim. tolerance set to 1/256" ?

Are you absolutely sure the lines and ref. planes are truly perpendicular?
I suspect something is off--Revit does not usually lie about these things.......

cheers

[mmiles]

Check the angle rounding setting in the project units......default only rounds to 1 decimal. These lines were off by .004 degrees.....which is a little maddening.

[cliff collins]

Best practice is to set units to 1/256" at the beginning of the project, and place geometry
very carefully at even increments, to avoid those odd 73/128" fractions that we all love to hate!

This will help avoid the issue you had here..........

cheers

[wmullett]

Are you sure the lines are parallel?... If you traced a CAD dwg, they probably are not. I agree with cliff....

[mmiles]

The walls were faces selected from a massing family. The walls, and now I assume the masses, have angles which measure 90, until I make a custom project unti,by rounding angles down to nearest 0.00001. then the angles appear as 89.99995. To which I scream - are you (expletive) kidding me!? Now, I appreciate accuracy, but I am having trouble figuring out how this tiny misalignment even occurred.

Once I resolve that, how can I ensure my ref planes, sections and elevations are truly normal to the walls? I cannot align sections, or elevations - thought they are supposed to "snap" to faces and planes - which were supposedly perpendicular in the first place.

[jsteinhauer]

The walls were faces selected from a massing family. The walls, and now I assume the masses, have angles which measure 90, until I make a custom project unti,by rounding angles down to nearest 0.00001. then the angles appear as 89.99995. To which I scream - are you (expletive) kidding me!? Now, I appreciate accuracy, but I am having trouble figuring out how this tiny misalignment even occurred.

Once I resolve that, how can I ensure my ref planes, sections and elevations are truly normal to the walls? I cannot align sections, or elevations - thought they are supposed to "snap" to faces and planes - which were supposedly perpendicular in the first place.

The best way to avoid this in the future is to setup your template with the units cranked. The dimension styles doesn't need to be 1/256, unless you want it to be that strict? Might be a good idea to have dims style setup for documentation and one setup for sanity.

I heard once that Japaneses architects & builders hate working with American Architects & Engineers, because we have to much fudge factor in our designs.

Best of luck with your massing.

Jeff S.

[mmiles]

hah! I would much prefer transitioning to metric for this kind of reason. I like precision, but this issue is a new one for me. I lost my whole day trying to resolve it.

Something about the free-wheeling concept design environment went wrong....the snaps seem to pick up lines and forms that are far away...so when selecting perpendicular snapping one must make sure it is really perpendicular to the intended plane - in other words, don't just trust the snap symbol, but make sure the plane intended is highlighting as well...i guess.

[nsinha73]

Agreed, if the backgrounds are CAD imports, then there lies the problem. Revit is a precision software, we gotta be careful and not fudge.
On the other hand if lines are not parallel, you can always select the first line, then instead of selecting the entire second line, select the points in the ends of lines...