cpascual Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 I am more familiar with printing in Pro/Engineer, so I kind of need some help printing in AutoCAD. Say I want to print a three-dimensional part but I want to print it with dimsenions showing. Is there anyway to do this easily in AutoCAD? I know in Pro/E I could make a drawing for a part and depict it in a few views to show all the necessary dimensions. Can this be done in AutoCAD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberAngel Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 AutoCAD makes it easy for you to show different views of a part by using viewports. Very simply, a viewport is like a camera that you can position at a desired point to show your part at a desired scale. Check your help system for Viewports, Paper Space, and Model Space. If anything isn't clear, we'll do our best to explain it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 Yea but does it have the capability of printing a part with the dimensions displayed? I have tried looking at the stuff you were talking about but the help menu wasn't very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nextvkin Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 I may be misunderstanding your question, but if your dimensions can be seen on screen, they should be printable unless the layer they are in is set to not plot, is frozen, or turned off. Or if you're talking about dimensions in 3D, then you'll have to have a different UCS for each face you're dimensioning, because you can only create a dimension on the Z=0 plane. Hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberAngel Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Pro/Engineer must handle dimensions differently. If you told us more about how it works, we might understand your situation better. In AutoCAD you have to define a dimensioning style, place each dimension, and (almost always) go back and adjust them. You can put dimensions for each view on a different layer and turn the layers on and off as needed in each viewport. Alternately, some people prefer to put their dimensions in paper space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 18, 2011 Author Share Posted January 18, 2011 In Pro/E you can open up the drawing space. Then you can select the part you want to use in the drawing. Then within the drawing I can orient different view of the drawing (top, bottom, left, right). I also have the option of showing dimensions, which would show all the dimensions used to make the part. Then I have to clean it up to delete all the dimensions I don't want shown or add other dimensions I do want shown. Then I could just print the drawing once I have it the way I want. I am just not that familiar with printing in AutoCAD but I am sure I just need to fiddle around with it more and I need to take a deeper look at "viewport". Any more advice would be awesome and greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the help so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkent Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Pro/E sounds like it works something like Inventor where dimensions are added as you 'sketch' the part. All the individual pieces are driven by these dimensions, change a dimension and the model changes. AutoCAD doesn't really work that way, you draw what you want to the size you want and later add dimensions. The model drives the dimensions, stretch a line that already has dimensions and the dimension will change. Change the dimension and nothing happens to the model. This has changed somewhat in 2010 and 2011. So in AutoCAD, draw your model, then place dimensions. In AutoCAD the various views are not made automatically where you can place a base view and then project ortho and iso views with a click, not yet anyway. But they can be made fairly automatically with the viewports command, pick 4 views and select the 3D option, pick points diagonal from each other. Then you will have to change the viewport styles to hidden, realistic, etc. Dims for the iso view will not work easily in PS but can be added in ModelSpace and displayed and plotted. So you need to go into PaperSpace, then use viewports. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Okay I got a hang of the viewports. Is there an easy way to display all the dimensions now. Like is there a command that will display all dimensions and then I delete the ones I don't want? Or do I have to use a dimension command specific to each dimension? Like DIMDIAMETER to display the diameter of the part or DIMLINEAR to display the depth of those holes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkent Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Yes you will need to use specific dim tools for diameter, radius, angle, linear, etc. Don't try placing dims on any isoviews as autocad will give the true projected length and not the model length. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 22, 2011 Author Share Posted January 22, 2011 Okay I have placed the dimsensions I needed to in order to define the part. Now how do I clean it up a bit? How do I delete some of the dimensions from being viewed in certain views, like the ones being shown in the top 2 views, or the one dimension being shown in the bottom left view? How do I change the text size of the dimensions because I havent been able to figure that out? Or will I not have to do that until I decide to print the drawing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkent Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 You can go into one of the viewports and use layfrz command, pick a dimension and that layer will be frozen in that viewport. Or go into a viewport, start the layer manager, find the dim layer, look to the right for layer freeze/thaw, and pick on the freeze/thaw icon. You may need to create another layer or two for dims and then you can place dims on separate layers and freeze those in the various viewports. I see dims in the one iso view that are a long way from the model. You will want to relocate the UCS to the model before placing dimensions. And you may want to dimension in paper space instead of model. Dimension text size can be a lot harder than it needs to be, let me see if there is a tutorial already set up on this site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Okay I was able to figure out changing the dimension text size larger. But I am having trouble understanding you. I just want hide some of the dimensions in the top two viewports and then that one dimension "0.000" in the bottom left view. So isn't there a way I can just hide all dimensions in a viewport and hide just certain dimensions in viewport? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkent Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 In AutoCAD the dimensions cannot be suppressed in a view. Layers can be frozen overall or per viewport. Like I said before, create other layers, set the dims on the layers depending on what you want to see or not see. You will go into a viewport, open the layer manager, find the layer name, follow the row over to the right to the freeze in VP and pick the sun icon to become a snow flake, that layer will be frozen in that viewport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpascual Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Okay I just figured out how to get into paper space. I have never worked in paper space so I am not really sure what to do. I want to make the viewports in paper space look like the the viewports shown in the model space, but I don't know how to go about changinging the views to look like that in paper space. I would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReMark Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 You can use MView in paper space. You'll have to assign a scale to each viewport. I would recommend creating a separate layer for your Viewports and set the layer to "no print". Finally, I'd also suggest that you lock each viewport display so as not to change the scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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