After you click New or Modify in the Dimension Style Manager dialog box, AutoCAD displays a tabbed New Dimension Style dialog box or Modify Dimension Style dialog box with a mind-boggling — and potentially drawing-boggling, if you’re not careful — array of settings.
You can select one of the colors in the list or click Select Color to open the Color Palette dialog box. Related Concepts. About Text Styles. Displays the Export Data dialog box: Cmd-F: Displays the Find and Replace dialog box: Cmd-V or Ctrl-V: Pastes the contents of the Clipboard to the current layout: Cmd-X or Ctrl-X: Removes the selected from the drawing and adds them to the Clipboard: Cmd-Y or Ctrl-Y or Shift-Cmd-Z: Reverses the most recent undo: Cmd-Z or Ctrl-Z: Undoes the most recent action.
Fortunately, the dimension preview that appears on all tabs — as well as on the main Dimension Style Manager dialog box — immediately shows the results of most setting changes. With the dimension preview and some trial-and-error setting changes, you can usually home in on an acceptable group of settings. For more information, use the Help feature in the dialog box: Just hover the mouse pointer over the setting that you want to know more about.
If you find the preview image hard to read in the Dimension Style Manager, New Dimension Style, or Modify Dimension Style dialog boxes, click and drag the right edge of the dialog box to increase the size of the preview image.
Before you start messing with dimension style settings, know what you want your dimensions to look like when they’re plotted. If you’re not sure how it’s done in your industry, ask others in your office or profession, or look at a plotted drawing that someone in the know represents as being a good example. A general rule that is helpful in virtually all aspects of life is to stick with the defaults unless you know specifically what you want to change and why.
When you have everything set the way you want it, click OK to close the Modify Dimension Style dialog box, and then click Close to exit the Dimension Style Manager. The new style is now current.
Following lines and arrows
The settings on the Lines tab and the Symbols and Arrows tab control the basic look and feel of all parts of your dimensions, except text.
Symbolically speaking
The settings on the Symbols and Arrows tab control the shape and appearance of arrowheads and other symbols.
A useful setting is Center Marks. Depending on which radio button you select, placing a radius or diameter dimension also identifies the center by placing a small center mark, or by placing center lines that extend just beyond the circle or arc, or none. The default is the tick mark, but many AutoCAD users prefer the line because normal drafting practice is usually to show center lines.
Tabbing to text
Use the Text tab to control how dimension text looks, which includes the text style and height to use and where to place the text with respect to the dimension and extension lines. In particular, note the Text Style drop-down list, which shows the text styles available in the drawing. Click the three-dot Browse button at the right end of the list to open the Text Style dialog box, and edit or create a suitable text style if one doesn’t already exist in your current drawing. The default Text Height in imperial units (0.180) is too large for most situations; set it to 1/8”, 3mm, or another height that makes sense.
You should define the text style for dimensions with a height of 0 (zero) in the Text Style dialog box. If you specify a fixed-height text style for a dimension style, the text style’s height overrides the Text Height setting in the New/Modify Dimension Style dialog boxes. Use a zero-height style to avoid the problem. A zero-height text style can be a real nuisance when placing text, which means that it’s almost mandatory to have at least two text styles defined: one for text and one for dimensions.
Getting fit
The Fit tab includes a bunch of options that control when and where AutoCAD shoves the dimension text if it doesn’t quite fit between the extension lines. The default settings leave AutoCAD in “maximum attempt at being helpful” mode. That is, AutoCAD moves the text, dimension lines, and arrows around automatically so that nothing overlaps. On rare occasions, AutoCAD’s guesses might be less than perfect. It’s usually easier to adjust the text placement by grip-editing the placed dimension, instead of messing with dimension style settings.
Even at its most helpful, AutoCAD sometimes makes a bad first guess about how you want dimension text and arrows arranged. If you’re having problems getting the look you want, flip the arrows to the other side of the dimension lines by selecting the dimension and choosing Flip Arrow from the multifunction grip on the arrow.
Most important, the Fit tab includes the Annotative check box. Using annotative dimensions makes dimensioning go a lot more smoothly!
The Use Overall Scale Of setting corresponds to the DIMSCALE system variable, and you’ll hear long-time AutoCAD drafters refer to it as such. If you’re using old-style non-annotative dimensions, this is where that number goes. It resizes text height, arrowhead sizes, and gaps accordingly. When Scale Dimensions to Layout is selected, DIMSCALE is automatically set to 0 (zero). When Annotative is selected, DIMSCALE is ignored, and a suitable scale factor is applied to each dimension when it’s created.
Using primary units
The Primary Units tab gives you highly detailed control over how AutoCAD formats the characters in the dimension text string. You usually set the unit format and precision, and maybe specify a suffix for unitless numbers, if it’s not clear from the drawing which units you’re using. You may also change the Zero Suppression settings, depending on whether you want dimension text to read 0.5000, .5000, or 0.5.
AutoCAD 2010 introduced an interesting tweak to dimension text: dimension subunits. Harvard reference tool for mac pro. If the main unit of measure on a drawing is meters, rather than have a bunch of smaller distances dimensioned as, say, 0.450, you could create a centimeter subunit so that any dimension of less than 1 meter would be shown in centimeters.
Other style settings
If your work requires that you show dimensions in two different systems of measure, such as inches and millimeters, use the Alternate Units tab to turn on and control alternate units. Alternate Units display both dimensions at a time. If your work requires listing construction or manufacturing tolerances, such as 3.5 +/-0.01, use the Tolerances tab to configure the tolerance format.
AutoCAD includes a separate TOLerance command that draws special symbols called geometric tolerances. If you need these symbols, you probably know it; if you’ve never heard of them, just ignore them. Search for the term Geometric Tolerance dialog box in the AutoCAD help system for more information.
If you’re lucky, someone will provide you with the AutoCAD plot files you need. If that’s the case, you must put the CTB or STB files in the Plot Styles folder for AutoCAD to recognize them. (To find the location of the Plot Styles folder, open the Options dialog box, select the Files tab, and look for the Printer Support File Path→Plot Style Table Search Path setting.)
If you’re unlucky, you need to be smart enough to know how to create your own plot style table files. Here’s how to create plot style table files:
Click the Application button to open the Application Menu, click Print, and then choose Manage Plot Styles.
Use the tiny down arrow at the bottom of the list to scroll farther down, if necessary. The Plot Styles folder opens in a separate Windows Explorer window.
Double-click the Add-a-Plot Style Table Wizard program shortcut.
Read the opening screen and then click Next.
On the Add Plot Style Table – Begin page, choose the Start from Scratch option or one of the other three options if you want to start with settings from another file. Then click Next.
The remaining steps assume that you chose Start from Scratch. If you chose another option, simply follow the wizard’s prompts.
If the creator of a drawing provides you with an AutoCAD R14/AutoCAD LT 98 PC2 (version 2) or AutoCAD R12/AutoCAD LT 95 PCP (version 1) file, choose the Use a PCP or PC2 File option. With this option, the wizard imports color-to-plotted-lineweight settings automatically.
On the Add Plot Style Table – Pick Plot Style Table page, choose whether you want to create a color-dependent plot style table (CTB file) or a named plot style table (STB file). Then click Next.
Choose Color-Dependent Plot Style Table to map screen colors to plotted lineweights. Choose Named Plot Style Table to create named plot styles that you can apply to layers or objects.
On the Add Plot Style Table – File Name page, type a name for the new CTB or STB file and then click Next.
Click the Plot Style Table Editor button on the Add Plot Style Table – Finish page.
The Plot Style Table Editor dialog box opens to the Form View tab if you’re creating a color-dependent plot style table, or to the Table View tab if you create a named plot style table.
If you choose a named plot style, the Plot Style Table Editor dialog box opens in Table view, with one plot style named Normal in the first data column, a blank column to its right, and Add Style and Delete Style buttons at the bottom. New named plot styles that you create continue to be added in columns to the right of the previous column.
If you created a color-dependent plot style table, assign Lineweight, Screening, or other plot properties to each color that’s used in the drawing. If you created a named plot style table, click the Add Style button and then assign plot properties to each of the named styles you create.
To determine which colors are used in a drawing, switch to the AutoCAD window and open the Layer Properties Manager palette by clicking the Layer Properties button, located on the Layers panel of the Ribbon’s Home tab.
To change a setting for all colors or named styles, select them all first by clicking the first color or named style, holding down the Shift key, scrolling to the end of the list, and then clicking the last color or named style. Any subsequent changes you make are applied to all the selected colors or named styles.
Click the Save & Close button to close the Plot Style Table Editor dialog box. Then click Finish to complete the steps in the wizard.
The Plot Styles folder now displays the new CTB or STB file.
Close the Plot Styles folder by clicking the X on its title bar.
Creating a plot style table the first time can be a harrowing experience because you have many options. Just remember that the most likely reason for creating one is to map screen colors to plotted lineweights. Also remember that you may be able to minimize your effort by getting a CTB or STB file from the person who created the drawing you want to plot.
For systematic testing of CTB files, you can download the file named plot_screening_and_fill_patterns.dwg from the AutoCAD 2010 Sample Files group. This drawing shows an array of color swatches for all 255 AutoCAD colors. The layouts (such as Grayscale and Screening 25%) demonstrate how different CTB files attached to the same layout produce radically different results.
Named plot styles hold a lot of promise, but in at least a couple of places (such as dimensions and tables, for example), they don’t work as well as traditional color-based plotting. Dimension properties allow you to assign different colors to dimension lines, extension lines, and text. The purpose is to allow different parts of a dimension object to print with different lineweights.
For example, you can have dimension text print with a medium lineweight, the same as the annotation text, while retaining the fine lineweight of extension and dimension lines. But because named plot styles are based on objects or layers, you don’t have that lineweight control over individual dimension components. The same limitation applies to tables, where you can set text to be one color and grid lines to be another.
If you decide to take advantage of the 16 million colors in the AutoCAD True Color or Color Book modes, you won’t control lineweights with color-dependent plot styles. CTB plot styles affect the lineweights only of objects that use the traditional 255 colors of the AutoCAD Color Index set. If you want True Color or Color Book colors, use object lineweights or named plot styles to control the plotted lineweight.