Manual Dimension not working?

[nathanburkholder]

Hello,

I recently came across the Manual Dimensions Youtube video. At marker 2:00 it explains how to move a wall an exact distance from another wall. When I do this, the wall I'm moving moves distance from original placement and not from highlighted wall. When I click a partition and move it to face of another wall, the wall doesn't highlight like it shows in the video. Am I doing something wrong or maybe a setting I'm not aware of?

Thanks. 

[Eduardo Rolon]

Presenter jumped a step.

To move a wall (or any object) a specific distance from another:

1. Select Object
2. Start the Drag command
3. move and hover on reference point, (do not click)
4. type "x" for horizontal, "y" for vertical, then the distance and "+" to move to the right "-" to move to the left.
   1. If you are using "feet and inches" and you are going in the negative direction you need to type "- -" (minus, minus) so that AC understands.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Actually, the reason the way shown in the video works is this: at 2:02, when the cursor reaches the left wall, you see that the blue pre-selection highlight is applied to the Wall, so we know which element the current action involves, but you can also see that the cursor shape changes to the "Perpendicular" cursor shape. This indicates that the drag vector extending from the origin of the Drag action is perpendicular to the relevant Wall (the left wall with the blue pre-selection highlight). 

Now, when you simply start typing without first typing the shortcut of a field within the Tracker ("x", "y", 'z", etc.), input will be entered into the first field of the Tracker, which is the Distance field. Before you start typing, you can see that the Distance field displays a value of 2350 mm, so when you type "2200-", this value will be reduced by 2200 mm, resulting in the value of "150" being displayed in the Distance field, and so when now you press the ENTER key, the elements will be dragged horizontally to the left only 150 mm.

So, the author of the video did not press the D or R keys to activate the Distance field of the Tracker (both work; D stands for Distance, while R stands for Radius), they just started typing the value, which was input into the first field, the Distance field of the Tracker, which is the default field to receive input in the Tracker. Doing it this way saves the effort of pressing the keyboard once.

Since the elements were dragged horizontally, both doing this and typing "X2200+" (as mentioned by Eduardo) would result in the same drag distance.

I would even dare to guess that the author was holding down the SHIFT key while dragging the three elements, thereby temporarily locking the drag vector to the horizontal direction (indicated by the blue horizontal Snap Guide) to guarantee that the Perpendicular point is found on the left wall.