dimensioning your drawings

DimDrawing.dwg is 2007 format, not 2000.

Oh crap!

Next time I need to put my glasses on.

OK...try this one instead.

[ATTACH]31496[/ATTACH]

First thing thank you to everyone who has tried to help me out. JD you have to realize you are dealing with a caveman in cad experience and I am just drawing objects at this point and don't have a finished product to attach. I am going back to my beginners tutorial and continue drawing without letting this dimension thing hang me up.

I use quick set up, my unit of measurement is set on architectural, my drawing area is 9"x12", my plot scale is 1"=1 drawing unit(1:1). I draw using relative co-ordinates with command and specify point method.

After I draw an object I check it with the quick dimension tool to make sure it was drawn the way I wanted. This is where the confusion begins. It sounds to me, you guys want me to undo this quick dimension and move on and complete my drawing and at some point there will be a tool I can use to dimension everything as I finish the drawing.

Forgive us for trying to bring you into the 20th century (notice we made no attempt to bring you into the 21st century). You do it the way it feels the most comfortable and forget what we said. However, if you are going to be doing more CAD work in the future then it would pay to follow the advice given by JDM and others. Did you open the sample drawing I provided in my last post? I'm kind of guessing that you didn't.

Good luck with your drawing.

No remark I could not open it, site said it was invalid, but I do enjoy the back and forth banter(the 20th century remark was pretty good). Now for my little dig. It seems unbelievable that all you pro's can't tell me how to change the numerical portion of a dimension indicator to read what ever you want it to read even if its xxxx. This should be a very simple move but I can't pull it off!

It is "measurement scale factor" that you have to adjust in Dimension Style Manager's Primary Units tab. But, it is considered a bad practice in Model Space. Default is 1 and it should stay that way when you are drawing your lines. The dimension of the 100 units long line should always read 100 in Model Space. There is no limit of your drawing space area. You can draw a whole solar system in 1:1 scale, if you want. See attached.

Universe.dwg

You can also choose to override the dimension that AutoCAD provides.

The drawing I was asking about was the one in post #22. The first one was saved to the wrong file format.

my drawing area is 9"x12"

This is your main misunderstanding of AutoCAD.

If your drawing area is a paper sheet which is 9" x 12", and you are drawing at 1/8" to 1', then the size of what you can draw on this bit of paper is actually 864" x 1152".

In AutoCAD you actually draw 864" x 1152", and the process of putting it onto paper does the scaling. Just imagine that if you wanted some of the drawing at a scale of 1/4" to 1', with AutoCAD's paper space, that could be done in a twinkling rather than redraw all the lines.

Your drawing area is infinite. Enjoy it

JD you have to realize you are dealing with a caveman in cad experience and I am just drawing objects at this point .....

I've been doing this a lot of years. I recognize the animal by the paw print it leaves. Draw something. Anything. What do the tutorials have you drawing? A rectangle? A wrench? Draw something and attach it here. From YOUR work others can help you move forward. Posting of outstanding examples of complicated work will only confuse you further. We need something YOU drew. Attach your file here.

Again I agree with JD you need to learn how to do it the right way and to also start out simple, very simple.

Again, forget about how much space you have to draw with. Always draw one to one.

Is your screen info correct? Are you using Architecture 2002? The reason I am asking is perhaps we can find or make a very simple tutorial to get you started.

Hang in there, you can do it.

I have to agree with the pros. If the dimension is giving you a bad number, then your model is not drawn correctly. That will give you more trouble down the road, and you won't be able to fix it as easily as relabeling a dimension. Yes, you can relabel the dimension, but that's just papering over the discrepancy.

If I'm not understanding the situation correctly, I apologize. If you truly want to learn AutoCAD, though, you'll learn to avoid the mistakes that people like us have been making over the years. One of my core strategies is to get the outline of the model 100% correct, or as correct as possible, before going on to the smaller stuff. Errors that get introduced early tend to get magnified as the work progresses. The longer you ignore them, the more effort it takes to clean up the mess.

F700es, thanks for the offer. I am using the free tutorial(http://www.we-r-here.com/cad/tutorials). I like the way it's presented but I am impatient and went on my own to quickly. I am going to go back to where I left off before I got hung up on this dimension thing, slow down and take it one step at a time, one chapter at a time.

Thanks to all of you, maybe I'll see you down the road when I have another question.

Well let us know how you get along and please come back and join in the discussions.