When working on 2D drawing I want to dimension from the center of a hole to either another hole or another feature or hole to hole. I have tried inserting a center point in the 3D model but the point does not come through to the 2D drawing. When I try to dimension from a hole it shows the diameter of the hole but no way to actually dimension from the center point. I can dimension it on the model and import all of the dimensions but that just gives be a bunch of dimensions in the wrong place and a bunch of dimensions that I do not want. It should not be this hard to dimension from hole to hole or hole to edge. What am I missing?
Dimension center to center
- Thread starter GordonL
- Start date
OK That does what I want. I kept getting the the slot dimension and I got confused because I did not want a slot. I wanted X and Y dimensions.
So far the dimensioning is the program feature that I am the most dissatisfied with.
Thanks for the reply.
Gordon
Yes. I ran into this recently when I had to drill a bunch of holes on the mill. The mill has digital readouts so ordinate dimensions are what I frequently need. I ended up exporting a DXF to my old 2D cad to get a drawing of what I actually needed. I frequently make a seperate drawing of a part just for that information. It does not actually become a part of the overall drawing package but is just used for reference during fabrication of the part.
I certainly miss a lot of the features included with my old 2D program.
I use Visual Cadd. Owned a metal fabricating shop for 30 years where I designed and built special material handling equipment.
gwbruce
Senior Member
I have never used Visual Cadd. I'm an old AutoCAD user from way back. Then went to work for a company that used Anvil 5000. Very powerful but not to user friendly. Then they switched to AutoCAD so I was right at home. Then they wanted us to start using Pro-E and I hated it. Then I changed jobs and was back to using AutoCAD. Then they lost AutoCAD (licensing issues) and switched to Draftsight. It was a lot like AutoCAD so no big issues. Then I left there and went to work for a place that uses Solidworks and Draftsight. When windows upgraded to Windows 7 my old version on AutoCAD I had a home no longer would run so I had to find a new cad software to use at home. I purchased ACTcad and it works great. Basically just like AutoCAD and a lot less expensive. I wanted 3D modeling capability at home so I found Alibre. Had some extra money so i purchased the Design Expert package and haven't looked back. So far there isn't anything I do at work with SW that I can't do at home. Sometimes the workflow is a little different but it works. You will really enjoy Alibre and if you ever need to update your 2D look into ActCad.
I use 4MCad for 2D work. Looks, Smells & Feels like AutoCad.
4msa.com
In the UK this is the reseller.
4M - E-SHOP
Stu3d
Senior Member
I too use Visual Cadd, probably fastest 2d cad software available as every command has a 2 or 3 letter keyboard shortcut. I started with it's predecessor Generic Cadd in about 1987.
I also started about that time. I started when the program was on 5" floppy disks and you had to change discs to do the next operation. I certainly wish that there was a similar 3D program. When I use Alebre I keep trying to do things by entering the two letter command that I have been using for the last 30+ years. There are so many things that just work so much better in Visual Cadd, for instance direct entry of coordinates. With Visual you can just enter the diameter and the X & Y coordinates to place a circle. With Alebre you have to make a circle someplace and then edit the diameter, X distance and Y distance. Do not place the circle too close to the correct position or it will be hard to move it to the correct position.
Stu3d
Senior Member
I sometimes find it quicker to produce a 2d drawing in Visual Cadd, convert vcd file to dwg/dxf, import file to Alibre and produce a part from that. I started with GC Level 1 which had no snaps so instantly upgraded to Level 3. Some drawings used to take minutes to redraw until I got a 286 cpu with 387 co processor. I fequently try and use 2 letter commands in Alibre
