Modify Automatic Dimensions on Drawings

Learn how you can add or delete dimension points on automatic dimensions or how to manually change the position of automatic dimensions.

Using the manual editing tools in Advance Steel you can also edit automatic dimensions. These modifications will allow the automatic dimension to keep its logic, while the newly added manual dimension points will follow the existing manual dimension functionality.

You can delete points using the Delete point command, located in the Labels & Dimensions tab Parametric Dimensions panel (Delete point).

Any point you remove from an existing automatic or manual dimension, using this command, remains deleted during update. The only exception is the situation when deleting a point from a manual dimension contradicts the respective scenario requirements.

You can make manual changes to existing dimensions automatically created by the Advance Steel drawing styles. These changes include:

• Deleting dimensions
• Adding or removing dimension points
• Moving the position of the dimension line or text
• Changing the dimension points

Delete dimensions

You can safely delete automatic dimensions and no setting will affect the behavior - a deleted automatic dimension will not reappear.

There are several scenarios where automatic dimensions that were deleted or even new dimensions that were not present before may appear in the drawing during update.

1. Deleted automatic dimensions reappear after update

   This situation appears when the drawing style is configured with multiple dimension requests for the same object (e.g. stiffener dimensions along the beam length). This type of configuration is made when different chains are needed for the same object, depending, for example, on the object's relative position to the beam middle axis.

   To avoid unnecessary duplicate dimension requests on assemblies, the dimensions have an option to combine and display only one dimension chain. When manually deleting one of the duplicated dimensions, Advance Steel will display the dimension request that was "hidden" due to the combine feature. The solution for this case, where deleting an automatic dimension triggers the other to reappear, is to perform the delete action multiple times and update the drawing. Once all instances of that dimension are deleted, they will no longer reappear on the drawing. In common practice, this type of dimension combination will have 2 or 3 layers.

2. Deleted dimensions reappear if the model object is recreated

   This can appear in the following scenario: an assembly drawing is created for a beam which has a set of holes created by a connection. The dimension on the holes is manually deleted, and it doesn't reappear after updating the drawing. The connection is then deleted from the model and recreated (with or without exactly the same hole position on the beam). At this point, the automatic dimension will reappear because the holes were deleted and recreated, and even if they are created exactly in the same spot, Advance Steel identifies them as new objects and triggers the dimension request to reappear. The dimension can be deleted once again, and the drawing will continue to look as it did before the model change.

3. Automatic dimensions may change position during update after deleting dimension chains

   When Advance Steel creates automatic dimensions, it has a set of positioning rules, such as:

   • Avoid geometry
   • Arrange in a set order
   • Use set distances between dimension chains and geometry

When dimensions are deleted during update, Advance Steel will reposition the remaining automatic dimensions by following the same rule from the drawing style - exactly as it would happen if the dimension chain was removed from the definition rather than manually from the created drawing.

Example: Delete an automatic dimension on a beam assembly drawing, as in the example below:

After updating the drawing, the three dimensions chains above the deleted one will rearrange themselves to occupy the gap.

Note: This behavior will always appear if you fill the gap with a manual dimension before updating the drawing - the automatic dimensions above will still shift position, overlapping the manual dimension.

Add or delete individual points on automatic dimensions

By using the Delete point or Insert point commands, you can also change automatic dimensions, by manually editing them. Doing this, the dimension chain will have a mixed behavior, with the automatic points working based on the drawing style request, while the manual dimension points behaving as any manual dimension would.

Manually changing the position of an automatic dimension

As mentioned before, all automatic Advance Steel dimensions use a set of rules to arrange themselves, and they can also adjust after certain manual modifications, but you can manually adjust their position, case in which the link with the automatic rules is broken for that respective dimension.

Example: Using the same case as previously, after deleting the automatic dimension chain in the middle, the position of the three dimension lines above it are manually modified before updating the drawing:

- The three manually repositioned dimension chains above the deleted automatic dimension chain.

- The gap left by the deleted automatic dimension chain.

After the update, the manually modified automatic dimensions do not reposition, and the gap is still present. A manual dimension could be created in this gap, and the overlap would not appear as mentioned before.