ordinate dimensions

[lizlandarch]

My office recently upgraded from Autocad 2000 to Autocad 2007 LT, we also have a few versions of Autocad 2008 so If working in that can help me please answer me in any of these versions.

When locating new features on construction drawings we typically use ordinate points to locate things like new catchbasins ect. in the past we have had one ordinate dim. for northings and one for eastings. Now my boss wants us to have both of these pieces of information on one line. Is there a way to modify the dim styles of my ordinates so that when I hit this command once both the x an y datum pops up? My boss claims he has done this before but doesn't know how to do it.. HELP...

Thanks!

[paulmcz]

My office recently upgraded from Autocad 2000 to Autocad 2007 LT, we also have a few versions of Autocad 2008 so If working in that can help me please answer me in any of these versions.

When locating new features on construction drawings we typically use ordinate points to locate things like new catchbasins ect. in the past we have had one ordinate dim. for northings and one for eastings. Now my boss wants us to have both of these pieces of information on one line. Is there a way to modify the dim styles of my ordinates so that when I hit this command once both the x an y datum pops up? My boss claims he has done this before but doesn't know how to do it.. HELP...

Thanks!

I have written something similar in form of a leader. It is for Vanilla acad and it is a Lisp routine. You pick a point on the screen and it initiates leader command, showing "x" and "y" values (and optionally "z") of that point. If you could use that (with your LT2007), let me know.

[lizlandarch]

Would I be able to label the x and y as N and E? and I am not familiar with lisp.. Is that going to be a problem?

[SLW210]

With out an add-on such as LT-Extender, LT will not run LISPS. The Full versions will.

[paulmcz]

SLW210 is right but if you still have acad2000 installed, lisp will work on that. There is no problem if you are not familiar with it, I'll tell you what to do but the problem is that I am not familiar with "northing and easting" and how that works with ordinate dimensioning.
Maybe, we can make it work somehow. Do you still have acad2000 installed?

[Alan Cullen]

"northing and easting" are just X & Y coords.

Northing = Y coord
Easting = X coord

[paulmcz]

"northing and easting" are just X & Y coords.

Northing = Y coord
Easting = X coord

How should that kind of dimension look like on the drawing? In what units?

[Alan Cullen]

Who knows. Depends on the units you are in and what country. Here we work in metres, so we display it as:
E. 356695.273
N. 8147496.263

Tiger, on the other hand is from Sweden and works in millimetres, so she displays it as:
Y. 356695273
X. 8147496263

(don't ask why the difference. I gave up trying to get her to explain).

So I guess the answer is dependant on where you are and how you work.

[paulmcz]

Can there be negative values (E. -1300)?

[Alan Cullen]

Sure can. But that relates to to the location of the 0,0 point of the drawing, and if any part of the drawing is to the West or South of that 0,0 point, then you have negative coords.

I don't think you can get negative coords on a mapping grid though.