Center Line of Object Dimensioning

[stuntmonkee]

I know this might seem like theres not enough info, but I'm fishin here.

I have created a family column, and in my drawing the same column will act differently, and here is how.

most columns allow you to dimension the the center of them. As you drag the dimensioning cursor of the mid point a line will highlight.

My problem is that some of mine do that and some others don't. . .same family though.

Anyway, what is in the family to get that dimensioning point to show?

[sbrown]

This is a long standing bug that drove me not to use columns for a long time. Here is what happens. When you place a column and it has no contact with a wall, you can dimension to its center, as soon as it has touched a wall, it no longer will dim to the center. I had thought this was fixed in 8.0, but just verified it still doesn't work. Structural columns work but basically as soon as a column joins to a wall you lose the ability to snap or dimension to its center.

[stuntmonkee]

whaaaaaa. . .thats crazy talk. . . so basically if I want these to work then I would have to re-insert every column? :-( thats nutz. . . .the odd part is, that there must be another factor that causes them to do that, becuase I'm sure some of them may have touched a wall at some point, but I doubt all of these did. . . .interesting. . . .

well. . .mud pile. . . .not sure what else to do besideds draw in a line or ref plane to dim too. . . .weak sauce.

[Henry D]

I also have Porch columns which are not touching any walls, some of them can be dimensioned to the centerline and other can't...I even tried adding invisible lines on the centerlines in the column family and that didn't work either.

[sbrown]

can you align them to the center? Maybe they are slightly off alignment. But maybe not, I've wrestled with strange column behavior.

[BWG]

You need to make sure you have a center ref. plane associated with the column as well. That is what it is really dimensioning too.