Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

Scalable Dimensions?

Anonymous
Not applicable
OK I have a wish.
What if there was a 'scalable' option to the dimensions too, just like there's one for the text. This way we can judge the dimension size based on the working units instead of the points unit that follow some ancient printing industry preferences. I remember getting completely flummoxed initially with points until I found out that it 72pt to an Inch. I know the pt is probably the graphic industry standard and probable tradition now but hell We're Architects. Leave us be with our Feet & Inches or Meters.

What say?
5 REPLIES 5
TomWaltz
Participant
There already is. It's in Archicad 10 under Preferences > Dimensions.
Tom Waltz
Dwight
Newcomer
Expressing text height in "points" is archaic and unreliable as any Archicad user who changes fonts and has the new font at the same point size present larger or smaller than the prior font knows.

The poster means that he would like to establish the height of his lettering at a dimensioned height: ie: points AND mm or inches in height (at that particular scale). iee: 6".

This is an excellent approach since the drawing view will have many scale references yo guide sizing already.

This should be included as an essential ArchiCAD feature, but not so easy since lettering and the "letterbox" volume a letter applies in sizing itself is not easily addressed. Photoshop and all Adobe products have this feature, but they aren't real world like Archicad is. Perhaps someday Photoshop will have a scaling ruler in it, too.
Dwight Atkinson
Anonymous
Not applicable
Dwight wrote:
Expressing text height in "points" is archaic and unreliable as any Archicad user who changes fonts and has the new font at the same point size present larger or smaller than the prior font knows.

The poster means that he would like to establish the height of his lettering at a dimensioned height: ie: points AND mm or inches in height (at that particular scale). iee: 6".

This is an excellent approach since the drawing view will have many scale references yo guide sizing already.

This should be included as an essential ArchiCAD feature, but not so easy since lettering and the "letterbox" volume a letter applies in sizing itself is not easily addressed. Photoshop and all Adobe products have this feature, but they aren't real world like Archicad is. Perhaps someday Photoshop will have a scaling ruler in it, too.
Thank You Dwight,
That was much better articulation than what I wrote.
But I didn't really get the "letterbox" volume bit, I'm not too conversant with the goings on at the backend of softwares.
Muchos Gracias.
ashy
Dwight
Newcomer
Modern fonts have an invisible "box" around a letter that defines its "kerning," the special spacing between letters that is not uniform from letter to letter. Likewise, the ascending height and the descending heights of the space around the letter create volume around the actual form, preventing letters from crunching together visually.

When you state a letter height in inches, that is fine for the AutoCAD stick (it) font, but defining height is more complex for modern fonts.
Dwight Atkinson
Anonymous
Not applicable
Dwight wrote:

When you state a letter height in inches, that is fine for the AutoCAD stick (it) font, but defining height is more complex for modern fonts.
The thing is if 'Pt's are units of distance(lenght/breadth/width);so are mm & inches in which case wouldn't it be simple to allow conversion to scalable text? Though I get your point about the autocad stick font.

And they have managed it for text(!), and the dimension witness lines, so why just leave out the dimension text?

A lot of my details are printed 'fit to scale' and it's so much more easy to visually judge the dimension 'size' by comparing it to other objects.