Sketch Dimensions -- Units and labels

michael_brooke241

Hi,

I'm a mechanical design engineer and have some feedback on sketch dimensions. In general, these need a lot more options for customization to be up to industry standard (e.g., solidworks or NX). 

A few examples I've noticed so far:

I should be able to add labels (or other notation) within a sketch dimension for better communication between team members looking at the sketch.

I couldn't find an option to display dimensions in other units. If a component interface is in a different unit, I should be able to display it as such in the sketch instead of a random decimal.

I should be able to change diameter to radius and vice versa.

While these aren't necessary for design, these kinds of things are important for communication and design documentation. If someone needs to revise parts years down the road, it's helpful to convey design intent. Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

stuart_robinson

+1 for labels in sketches. i know you can add comments but it would be a huge benefit to look at a sketch and see all the labels at once vs having to keep clicking back and forth

martin_kopplow

I agree regarding diameter vs. radius. I yet have to see a really good solution, though. Switching to diameter when a center line is present, could be one (Catia), but even this has its traps and room for misunderstandings. I can live with a diameter calling for a circle, a radius being applied to an arc for now. If you start out with a circle, dimension it and then remove part of it, as design evolves, it'll still be dimensioned as a circle.

Labels would indeed help a lot, in sketches, but also (more directly than now) in the model, even if it only was the "Memo to myself" use case. Today, I sometime find myself creating a drawing of my model in process and annotating that, just to keep track of ideas and to-dos.

You could input the dimension in inches, the sketch dimension will then convert it, and whenever you doublclick on it, it'll display the dimension in inches again, just like the input was. Maybe it would help a bit, if OS had an option to display the inch value until a user changes it, or if there was a unobstrusive alternate unit toggle GUI element, or if a sketch could have a second (driven) inch-dimension on the same element (though under the bottom line, mankind would be better off abolshing inches rather sooner than later). For drawings, the alternate unit option exist, so external communication is already taken care of.

Ste_Wilson

It would be so much simpler if the Burma and the USA just adopted the metric system!