Dimensioning skylights

[cbalestreri]

I modeled a flat roof, sloping to drain points. On that roof, I placed a series of skylights. I set a bunch of reference planes in the main model, and aligned my skylights to them to get the appropriate spacing. When I dimension to them, I have found that they are not quite parallel. I'm not sure why, since all the reference planes per perpendicular to one another. They look fine, but how can I dimension them? I tried placing reference lines in the skylight family, and that helped to align to the planes in the model, but I can't use them to dimension with. Is there some way I could just place a point in the center of the skylight I could use to grab a dimension string to?

[bbeck]

Reference planes or invisible lines in the family should work. If your family is built around "center L/R" and "center F/B" then your dimension string will pickup the centerline option.

[cbalestreri]

The family is built just like you said. I can get one string to dimension vertically, but when I try to go the horizontal direction it doesn't work. For some reason they are tweaked out plane to one another or something and it won't allow me to dimension between them.

[jsteinhauer]

You're families are sloping with your roof, and therefor not aligned to the level. You can try to set your work plane as the roof surface to see if that will help.

Cheers,
Jeff S.

[bbeck]

Are you using Dimension Aligned or Linear?

[cbalestreri]

Funny you should mention that. I was using dimension align. Setting my work plane to the roof plane didn't work, but I did come up with a solution. I used dimension linear. I did this once before, but the dimension tool wouldn't dimension in the direction I wanted it to (they bunched up going the wrong direction). So I pulled them way up in the drawing, then quit the tool, pulled them down, and edited the witness line along the remaining skylights. Not pretty, but it works. Or maybe it is how I should have been doing it.