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jj mac
2010-01-14, 08:20 PM
I am trying to dimension to a railing that uses a rectangular profile, however in certain cases the dimension extension line will not pick the railing.

In some cases it works just fine, and in some cases it doesn't work at all. I have tried playing around with the cut plane, adjusting the sketch, etc... but there seems to be no common element to make sense of this.

Has anyone else experienced this...???
brendan.225840
2010-01-14, 09:13 PM
You're not the first person to have had this problem, I have as well and it's pretty maddening. I'l had better luck picking to the edge of a railing than to the centerline, in which case I'll usa afilled region and an invisible line to generate the center line I need to generate my dimension.
Not a perfect solution, but it works.
sbrown
2010-01-14, 09:47 PM
Its because those profiles are created with the center as the origin. modify them so there is a ref. plane for the top(or where you want to dim to) then you should be able to dimension them.
brendan.225840
2010-01-14, 11:05 PM
Its because those profiles are created with the center as the origin. modify them so there is a ref. plane for the top(or where you want to dim to) then you should be able to dimension them.

Nice suggestion, thanks!
patricks
2010-01-15, 01:13 PM
Its because those profiles are created with the center as the origin. modify them so there is a ref. plane for the top(or where you want to dim to) then you should be able to dimension them.

Hmm I tried creating a new round hand rail profile with ref planes on all sides, yet I still cannot dimension to the top of the rail in section. Any ideas?
sbrown
2010-01-15, 01:37 PM
did you make the references - Strong ref. or set them to be Top and Bot?
patricks
2010-01-15, 02:24 PM
did you make the references - Strong ref. or set them to be Top and Bot?

Strong Ref or Top/Bottom, didn't matter.

Looks like it had to do with the start and end point locations of the arcs defining the profile. I changed the profile to 4 90-deg. arcs and it seems to work correctly. I end up dimensioning to points on the rail ends, not the edges of the rail itself, but it works just the same.