Learn how to accurately update and relocate dimension text in your projects, without compromising the precision and integrity of your work. This article provides step-by-step guidance for editing dimension text, moving it to enhance readability, and overriding text when necessary.
Key Insights
- Updating or overriding dimension text should be done cautiously to maintain the accuracy of the project. Misrepresenting dimensions can lead to inaccuracies in the final project.
- Dimension text can be moved to improve readability without altering its value. It is advised to maintain a visual connection between the dimension text and the dimension string when relocating text.
- Adding additional text, such as "TYP" for "typical," can provide extra context within the project. This can be useful to indicate repeated details or conditions within the model.
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In this video, we will finish moving our dimension text around and, in some cases, updating or overriding our dimension text. It is very rare that we ever want to update or override dimension text.
We never want to update dimension text, especially to another number, because we would prefer that our projects are accurate instead of just typing in whatever dimension we need. This is also the principle behind selecting our geometry every time we place a dimension. To start, let's look at these 10 foot 0 inch dimensions on the left side of our drawing.
On the handout, you can see that these say equal, and that is because these dimensions have been overridden for their text. If I double click on the text of a dimension, you will see that a text box appears, and it will include the dimension text in a purple outline. This includes the dimension value itself, and in this case, I can hit delete to remove that dimension value.
Now, I can simply type the word equal and click outside the text box to close. I can do the same thing up here. I'll pick on this dimension, delete, and type equal.
Click outside the text box to close. I have fully overridden the dimension text, and in this case, I've done it without typing in a new distance, and that's okay. As long as we override it with other text and definitely do not type a different distance, we should be okay to override text.
Additionally, if we zoom in at the top, we can see that this dimension includes extra text, and that is the word TYP period. That stands for typical, and it tells us that this detail or this condition exists in other parts of the model. So, I'll click on three and one-half inches, and in this case, I want to put the TYP period at the end of our dimension value.
So, I'll pull this text box a little wider, and then I can click on the right side of my dimension value and hit space TYP period, and now I can click to the side. Now, I can hit escape, escape, escape. I also want to move this text over, and I can do that by using grip edits.
I can select the text, and here's the text grip. I can click to make it hot and right click. You can see that I have stretch, move with dim line, move text only, move with leader, and more options.
In this case, I want to move with dim line, and I'll move it to the right and click. Escape, escape, escape. Now, that text is not overriding my tick marks, and it is easier to read.
We can do the same thing for our three-inch jam typical over by this door. Again, I will double click the text, make my text box a little bigger, click to the right, space jam TYP for typical period. I'll close the text editor, and in this case, I can see that I got closed brackets, open brackets.
This might happen sometimes as an error. All you need to do is click back in and remove that text information. Close text editor.
Now, I can hit escape, escape, escape, click my text, and again, I'll click the grip to make it hot, right click, move with dim line. I'll place this text right here. Escape, escape, and control S to save.
Next, let's talk about just moving text without changing the text value. If we come down into this section here, we can see a couple of instances where it's hard to read the text. This five and one half inch distance could probably be moved just to the side, and it will be easier to read.
If I click the text and then click the grip to make it hot, I could simply move the text over here without updating the dimension line or moving it with a leader. However, I don't prefer to do that. I would like to always move dimension text with some sort of visual connection to the dimension string itself because with this principle in mind, I could move this text all the way over here, and now it's impossible to tell which dimension geometry this dimension text belongs to.
I'll undo and undo, and that's why I always like to click to make it hot, right click, move with leader, or move with dim line. That rule can be broken slightly if we are moving text along the dimension line, which you can see here with the five foot six. It is covering the range, and there is a lot of space up here, so all we need to do in this case is select the text and move it up and click to place.
That text is still very connected, visually at least, to the dimension string, so I don't need to draw it with a new leader or change it with the dimension line. Next, let's come up into this section and look at this four and three quarter inch dimension. That's very crowded inside of the dimension string, so let's move it out.
I'll click on the text, click to make the grip hot, and right click, move with leader. This will generate a leader that points back to the dimension string and allows us to place the text, and I'll place it roughly here, so that it's visually still connected to the original dimension string. We can do that two more times on the right side of our project with the same dimension, four and three quarter inches, click the dimension to make it hot, right click, move with leader, and in this case I'll choose shift right click nearest and pick right on my magenta line here, and I'll do the same with this dimension.
Click the grip to make it hot, shift right click, move with leader, and I'll go in the same direction, which is down, shift right click nearest, and choose on the dimension string. Escape, escape, escape, zoom extents, and control s to save. In the next video, we will create an e-transmit and the pdf of our A201 floor plan.
