AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

- [Instructor] Welcome once again to another tip and trick in my AutoCAD Tips and Tricks series. And we're gonna have a look now at creating an effective METRIC dimension style. Now it's a very simple drawing that we've got, it's a little gear wheel there. And the drawing is called DimstyleMETRIC.dwg. See the name of it there at the top of the screen. Download it, store it somewhere from the library, separate from the library so that you can use it over and over again. And open it up in AutoCAD.

Now we're in the Model tab and Dimensions as you can see in the Layers panel there is the current drafting layout. Now we're gonna create an effective METRIC millimeters dimension style. Now you can do this in two ways. I can go to the Annotation flyout here on the Home tab, and click here to go to Dimension Style. Or I can co to the Annotate tab and click here to go to the Dimension Style. I don't mind which one, and what we're going to do is open up the Dimension Style Manager.

Now you can see we've got all the standard ones in there, Annotative, ISO-25, and Standard. ISO-25 is the one we're gonna start with, so we click on New, like so. Now the new style name is going to be just Training, nice and easy, you're training, you're learning, quickest way. So new style name is Training there. And we're gonna start with ISO-25 and we're just gonna hit Continue. We're gonna use it for all dimensions. Now just before you hit Continue, we're gonna tick that Annotative box.

We want it to be an annotative dimension style. You'll see why in a moment and then click on Continue. So there's our new dimension style Training. Now we're gonna start with the Lines tab in the dialog box and I'm just gonna jump through this really quickly and really simply. Everything that is color, linetype, or lineweight, you want it to be bylayer. You want it to adopt your dimension's layer settings. So I'm just gonna change everything to bylayer like so. So that's all bylayer there.

My baseline spacing, I'm gonna make that 10 millimeters. And this is my little sort of quick guide to the sort of settings and numbers that you need for an effective METRIC dimension style. Extension lines here, again make all of these bylayer, like so. Everything there bylayer. Suppress, don't tick anything. Extend beyond dimension lines, 2.5 millimeters, press the tab key, offset from origin, four millimeters, press the tab key.

Now extend beyond dim lines is this little bit here and the offset from the origin is this little bit here. We go to the Symbols and Arrows tab now. I'm gonna leave all of those as closed filled arrowheads for now and I'm gonna make my arrow size 3.5 millimeters. I'm gonna set my center marks to none and dimension break I'm gonna leave at 3.75. Arc length, I'm gonna leave it preceding dimension text. Radius jog dimension, jog angle, 45 degrees. Jog height factor, 1.5 times the text height.

I'm then gonna go to the Text tab here. I'm gonna stick with the standard text style. You can see it there, it's Ariel. That font will be fine for now. Text color, bylayer, fill color, I'm gonna leave it as none, but you can have a fill behind the text. I'm gonna set that back to none. Text height, we're gonna leave that at 2.5, well maybe that's a little bit small, let's go with 3.5. Again, you can alter this to suit by modifying the dimension style later. Vertical text placement, above the dimension line each time.

Horizontally it's centered on the dimension line each time. View direction should always be left to right. If you set it to right to left, you can see it does look a bit weird, but in certain elevations and sections that does work. But normally, 99 times out of 100, left to right. Offset from dim line, let's go for 1.5 millimeters like so. Now it's up to you what text alignment you use. They can all be horizontal, or you can align them with the dimension line or you can use the ISO standard where the radius or the diameter has that horizontal crank there in the preview.

The fit should all just be as it is because it's annotative, don't change anything. Primary units, we've got a unit format of decimal with two decimal places. We're using a decimal separator right now, which is the comma, which tends to be European. Most of the time you would use the period setting, which is also a decimal place, or a full stop. So you can see there that you've got a dot rather than a comma. Round off, leave at zero. Everything else you can leave here. Zero suppression, just make sure Trailing is ticked.

So that any trailing zeros are suppressed after the decimal place. So you'll notice that's exactly 60 degrees. If I take the precision up to two decimals places, it's still exactly zero degrees, but if I switch the trailing on, you'll see the zeros get removed 'cause it's exactly 60 degrees. Alternate units, we're not gonna have any. Tolerances, we're not gonna have any, so make sure that's set to none. Back to the Lines tab, click on OK. You've now got your new Training annotative dimension style.

So what we're going to do, we're gonna set that as current there and click on Close. We're now gonna add a few dimensions. If you're in the Annotate tab, which I suggest you go to. In the Dimensions panel here, you can override the dim layer. So make sure you're using the Dimensions layer. All your dimension types are here, so we can use some linear dimensions. And as soon as you do this, you'll notice you're creating an annotative object, an annotative dimension. If you haven't set any annotation scale yet in your AutoCAD drawing, it will prompt you.

Now in this particular case, I do want it to be annotative. And in the particular drawing, if this pops up, you want to set it to one to two. And then click on OK. Don't ever tick this, it's useful in new drawings 'cause it warns you that you're creating an annotative object, so click on OK. Now where does that scale kick in? Look down at the bottom of the screen on the status bar. There's your annotation scale in the model space. So if I click on that arrow there, you'll see I can set that to one to two.

Then I go back to my linear dimension because I've just canceled it by changing the annotation scale. Click on linear, and I can go from, let's say, from this endpoint here, make sure your object snaps are on, to say, this endpoint here, click again. And as I come up, there is my linear dimension. I click like so. Now that particular linear dimension, because it's annotative, will appear quite nicely in the ISO A4 Landscape layout tab here because this particular viewport here is set to one to two.

If you click on it, you can see that's also one to two. Now I'll just hit escape there to deselect the viewport and you can see that dimension is obviously in the wrong place. So let's go back to the Model tab. And what I need to do there is perhaps click on it. Click there and bring that down a little bit to say there. Hit Escape to deselect, go back to the ISO A4 and you can see it now works nice and neatly. Back to the Model tab again, let's pop a couple of other dimension types in there. Let's do a radius, so we'll do a little radius there off of that one, off of the circle, there's the radius 100, perhaps.

And we might do another radius coming off of the smaller circle, coming out here, the radius, there see. If I jump back into the ISO A4 Landscape tab, you can see because they're annotative and they're at that viewport scale of one to two, both in the viewport, and with the annotation scale set here at one to two, everything's consistent with your annotative dimension style. So what you've done there is you've created an effective METRIC annotative dimension style. And it all works nicely and everything works really well in your AutoCAD drawing.