Learn the specifics of creating dimensions in design, including linear dimensions, wall endings, and placement positioning for clearer interpretation by the contractor. This article takes you through the intricate process of dimensioning and highlights how to ensure that all relevant information is included for easier construction.
Key Insights
- Creating dimensions in design involves several steps such as setting linear dimensions from wall end to wall end, ensuring that the dimension text is not hidden by the geometry and the dimensions are neatly presented for easy interpretation during construction.
- Dimension placement positions vary but what matters most is ensuring that all crucial information is included. For instance, dimensions can be placed for bathroom doors, bedroom walls, and other structures, even if their positioning differs from standard handout guidelines.
- While creating dimensions, the aim is always to make construction as easy as possible, hence the need for clear, neat dimensioning. This includes adding dimension strings where necessary, maintaining dimension gaps, and aligning dimensions to geometry for clarity.
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We're almost there, just a couple more dimensions to go. We've just gotten these dimensions done in the bedroom. I'm going to go on and do a linear dimension from the end of the wall, go to the end of the wall here, and I can put this dimension string in here, pick on the grip, pull it to the left, put ortho on.
So again, I'm just pulling the dimension so that the text is not hidden by any of the geometry. Going a little bit closer, linear dimension, end of the door, end of the door, place it alongside this, and I'll continue to the inside face of the wall. The two foot three and a half is blurred by other stuff.
Pick on the geometry, pick on the grip, take ortho off, let the inches component of the dimension line up, go to home tab, go to polyline, turn off my running osnap with F3, and I'm just picking, doing my little loop, right in through there, pick on the loop, right button, polyline, edit polyline, right button spline, control S to save. I can do my dimension if I'd like. I can come back in, a linear dimension, end of the wall, end of the wall, line it up here, so I've just gone through there.
I can put my dimension in for the bathroom door, linear dimension, end of here, end of here, place it there. You know, I'm placing my dimensions, in a couple of these cases, in slightly different locations than you have in the handout. The important thing is making sure that all of the information is there.
That's the most important thing. So then, I'm going to start working in this bedroom, linear dimension, check the faces of the wall, end of the wall, end of the wall, place it here, linear dimension, end of the wall, end of the wall, place it here. Again, if you'd like, I can always choose this string since it's the same wall, and move the grip point up to there, linear dimension, end of the wall, end of the wall, place it here.
Again, what you're always trying to do is to convey the information that's going to make construction as easy as it possibly can, and you always want to keep information looking neat. I have another string that I need to add here, so I'm going to go continue, and I'm going to select this dimension, and I'm going to continue it up to the end of the wall, right over here. I hit escape.
I just confirm that it's the right size. I have some dimensions I'd like to place in the bathroom, linear dimension on either side of the door, linear dimension either side of the door. I'm already showing the placement of this wall.
I know that I have my three-inch jam typical here. I don't see on the left-hand side the dimensions for the location of this wall, so I see that it's going to be on the right-hand side, so I'm going to end up starting my string, do a linear dimension from the edge of the outside face of the building to the edge of the wall here. I'm placing my string here.
I can go to continue. It's following that point. I'm going to go from there.
I'm going to go down to the door opening, go to the end here, go to the edge of the building here, and go to the end of the wall over here, go to the end of the wall here, and go to the outside face of the building there. Now, if need be, what I can always do, because you can see how this is slightly close, I can go stretch crossing, and I'm just picking it, making it go to the right, and then I can say stretch crossing from the end of here to the end of here. Again, because the dimensions are linearly aligned, they will only go in the direction that I'm choosing, and then stretch crossing here from the end to the end of here.
This way, I'm just making sure these lines are all the way across. This is a little bit confusing. I can click on this grip and move it more to the right.
Now, you can see that I pulled it down slightly, and so what that did was it broke the line, so I'm going to undo it, pick on the grips, put ortho on, and now pick it over to the right, because I really don't want to have this dimension line broken. Now, one potential issue is the fact that I have a cabinet here and a cabinet line under here, but my dimension string is on top of it. Typically, we are dimensioning to the faces of the walls, but you can see how with all this geometry on top of one another, this point looks unclear, so I can take here, pick on the grip, and pull this line back to there so that I maintain my dimension gap there.
So it's a piece of cabinetry, but everyone can tell that it's lining up to the geometry. I'm going to put some dimensions in the bedroom, end of here, end of here, continue to the end and to the end, so I've gotten all the strings in there. You know, if you'd like, if this alignment here bothers you that it's too much in line with that, I can always go back and stretch.
All I need is to stretch over three of them to pull these up a little bit farther, again, to make the information as clear as you possibly can for the contractor. I'm going to go back to annotate, linear dimension, inside face, edge of the door, place this guy here, continue to the end of the door and again to the outside face of the building, click save. I'm going to put some dimensions here in this bulk storage, linear dimension, end of here, end of here, place it here and continue to the inside face.
You can see that I'm trying my best to keep both of these dimensions dimensioning to the same side of the wall just to make the construction easier for the contractor, so you can see that there are three dimension strings that are horizontal dimension strings that are all going to that left side face of the wall. We've gotten master bedroom done, master bathroom done, interior, exteriors are done, this bedroom is completed, have the dimensions here, this bathroom is completed, this bed is completed, closet, bedroom are completed, foyer is completed, I have all my dimensions here in this bathroom, bulk storage is completed, living room appears to be completed, fireplace detailing completed, I do believe that I need to add a dimension that shows how much the fireplace kicks out, so linear dimension, end of the house, pick it and let it go over there, the one foot ten, once again save the drawing. Again, the reason these are floating is because they're linked into our herringbone pattern.
And you know what? It looks like we've gotten all of our dimensions done. This is terrific, everybody. Well, great.
Okay, so here's the game plan. We've gotten the house done and when we return back to our work on the house, we're going to start putting it onto obviously a sheet file and then deal with some multiple scale drawings being extracted directly out of this model. One thing I'd just like to bring to your attention one more time is that when we have the issue of a model where we're going to be using it for multiple scales, you can see that we've done dimensions, so we renamed the layer ADIMS48.
Any text that we would have in the drawing, we would rename that to be on the layer ATEXT-48. Any symbols that we end up using in this drawing, we will rename ASIMS-48. This way, all of our model geometry, the doors, the walls, the windows, the counters, are on their model equivalent layers, but dimensions, symbols, and text, since they are in fact drafting information and since we're going to be using this model to convey information at different scales, we would have dimensions, symbols, and text with layer names like ADIMS48, SIMS48, TEXT48, and then we'll come back later on and have DIMS24, DIMS12, SYMBOLS24, SIMS12, and so on and so forth so we can best isolate information.
Well, great. I hope you've been enjoying this project so far, and we're on to some continued good stuff. Look forward to seeing you real, real soon.
Have fun. for now.