Measurement in Onshape

lougallo

Onshape has a very subtle measure feature built right in the lower right corner that will display measure details based on the current selection(s).


- Edges:
line - length
circle - diameter, perimeter
arc - radius, length
- Faces:
Planar face (1): area
Planar face (2): minimum distance
Cylindrical face (1): area
Cylindrical face (2): min distance between

- Points:
Point/vertex (2): distance and X,Y,Z

In Part Studios behavior is straight forward, however measuring in Assemblies is a bit tricky at the moment. Currently the default selection in Assemblies is the entire part so to select measurement entities (faces, edges, points) use Select Other to select these entities. Once you select them, measure results will display in the lower right corner. We are improving this workflow and will update this post once it is live on cad.onshape.com. See below..

lougallo

**UPDATE** You no longer need to use Select other in the current build!

mike_mcgrath

How do you change the precision of the values displayed by the measurement tool?  Right now mine only give 2 decimal places....

stg434

There is a support ticket open for this...

3dcad

Request:
When hovering a sketch element, use a button to change selection if hovering covers multiple elements. I find select other in RMB a bit slow and un-handy way to select if needed a lot.

frank26080115

3dcad said:

Request:
When hovering a sketch element, use a button to change selection if hovering covers multiple elements. I find select other in RMB a bit slow and un-handy way to select if needed a lot.

EAGLE CAD handles this problem by using a different highlight color when it is ambiguous which element you want to select. RMB will cycle through the list of possibilities (change what is highlighted), and LMB will confirm the selection.

3dcad

I would very much like to be able to see measurement on the screen also (like dimension in sketch mode) and create a named view with visible dimensions.

Any thoughts?

andrew_troup

I can see the merit in the notion of a "named view with visible dimensions", but I'm not sure I would want there to be two different ways of achieving this same result, so I would personally like to see this capability integrated seamlessly with drawings.

3dcad

I don't actually like drawings since I rarely need 'standard views'.. For me it would be enough to have few specific views with dimensions and annotation.

And if you think of assembly documentation/directions where you might need to add some dimensions to separate some specific direction of part or so. Just adding visible dimension would be far more handy than creating standard drawing and section view with detail view to reach the needed position and show it so that anybody can understand what is it about.

andrew_troup

@3dcad: I wasn't  arguing that the capability should necessarily require the production of a drawing, but that (if possible and practicable) the 'front end' user interface should either be the same, or have the same look and feel, regardless of whether the resulting view was required for a drawing, or just for a named view.

jakeramsley

3dcad said:

I would very much like to be able to see measurement on the screen also (like dimension in sketch mode) and create a named view with visible dimensions.

Any thoughts?

If you right click on a sketch/part and choose 'Show dimensions', we try to show underlying sketch dimensions that help build the part.  Is this similar to what you are hoping for?

3dexter

Also I love to see on the screen dimensions.

Already opened a ticket about it in the past and has also been discussed several times in the forum!

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/5347/#Comment_5347

And one of the most used tools, we expect improvements ... is also one of the few tools that do not like the Onshape!

3dcad

@jakeramsley Yes, I'm familiar with 'Show dimension' - but if you need dimensions from multiple sketches it falls short.. I would like to see a robust measurement tool with visible dimension and include these dimensions to named views.
I'm thinking webstore images to show product dimensions, assembly documentation, marketing material etc. where drawings are too 'technical'.