Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations MintJulep on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

dual dimension

Status
Not open for further replies.

Kathie

Mechanical
Jun 18, 2004
22
Can someone tell me how I can display dimensions on a drawing in both metric and inches?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

RMB on a dimension then select properties. Their should be a button dual dimensions. circa 2003
 
The only drawback is it will only show metric as primary (top), inches on bottom. I sent in an enhancement request to SolidWorks.
 
In Tools/Properties/Document Properties, there is a checkbox to make all dimensions appear this way.

What drawback are you talking about ctopher?

Jason Capriotti
Smith & Nephew, Inc.
 
If you have an ANSI dwg, how would you set the dual dimensions to show metric on the bottom as default?
 
I tried that and it will make inches on top in parenthesis, metric on bottom. All other dim's will be in metric. It is not what it should be with ANSI settings.
 
I’ve contemplated sending an enhancement request in regards to dual dimensioning as well. Hey, when I need to dimension in angstroms and nanometers, I’m all set, and I appreciate the flexibility.

But I could really use one more: Custom units.

AutoCAD (forgive me, father) had this functionality and it really came in handy at times. There was a property for the Alternate Dimension named “Alt Dim Scale.” Basically it multiplied the scale value by your primary dimension and used the result for your Dual Dim.

The beauty of this is that you’re not limited to hard-coded ratios like SW is offering.

If I’m dealing with a part I know will shrink by a given factor, I can show on my drawings the process (pre-shrink) dimensions as the primary and the finished (post-shrink) dimensions as the dual dim, just by specifying that unique factor somewhere in the dual dim settings.


System: Dell Precision 650—Intel Xeo @ 2.66 GHz with 1/2G RAM
OS: Windows 2000 SP3
Graphics: NVidia Quadro FX 500 128Mb (OpenGL set to Solidworks)
Version: Solidworks 2005, SP0
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor