Adding Dimension to an ellipse

IsleofGough

I am learning Onshape and tried to recreate a simple hemostat. The template (sketch) for the hemostat has an ellipse. When I come to creating a drawing, the dimension tool does not seem to work on the ellipse. What I would like is the width and length of the ellipse. How is this done? Thanks.

MichaelPascoe

For drawings like this, here is one approach that I use:

• Create a sketch with points in the locations you would like to dimension
• While inside the drawing, right click the view of the model, show/hide sketches, select the sketch that has your points
• Dimension the sketch points

IsleofGough

The tip to add points and show sketches was very helpful. I can get it to work with a drawing based on a part but not a drawing based on an assembly.

MichaelPascoe

This may or may not work, but here is another tip:

• Dimension to something, anything
• Click the dimension line so that it is highlighted, (This will ensure that when you drag the dimension point, it grabs the selected dimension even if there are multiple lines overlapping)
• Drag the ends of the dimension to the orthogonal positions of the ellipse

IsleofGough

The first method worked great but for some reason, I couldn't get the second method to snap to anything after the first point.

IsleofGough

Thank you very much for the solutions!

paul_myers999

I have the same issues.
    - Can't use the sketch option in an assembly drawing.
    - The drag approach seems to snap to weird places.

You might be able to use the Shift-q keyboard shortcut to select quadrants of an ellipse from here
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/6010/how-does-one-dimension-an-ellipse-in-drawings


My design is a swept feature around an ellipse, and all of these options seem to work in the minor axis, but not on the major axis.