Dimensions for Detailing
Plugin AVC_DimDet for AutoCAD and BricsCAD.
Arrangement of dimensions and leaders on furniture 3d-solid parts. Designations, diameters and positions of drillings. Overall dimensions. Coatings and edge bandings.
The DimDet command will help you get the details of typical flat sheet furniture items faster. The program studies the structure of selected 3D-solids, finds drilling holes, inclined ends, coating materials and edge bandings. And automatically arranges leaders, diameters, blocks of hole designations, dimensional chains. After calling this program, in many cases you will only have to restore beauty, move the dimensions. For typical furniture parts, the program will reduce your work time to almost zero. But more complex parts will have to arrange some dimensions manually. However, the time savings in this case will be huge, and the number of errors will be reduced.
Program features:
Analyze any 3D-solids laid out in the XY plane.
The user can rotate the part around Z as they like. In any case, the dimensions will be placed along the X and Y axes.
Find drill holes suitable for CNC style settings.
Create dimension chains for frontal holes.
Create dimension chains along the straight ends of a part up to lateral drills.
Take into account the priority of the 32mm step for choosing the base of the dimension chain.
Consider the maximum width of the drilling machine and measure from both ends of the part if the part is wider than the machine.
Create frontal and lateral hole diameters.
Use a template with hole and part property substitutions to indicate the diameter. By default, the blind hole template includes drilling depth.
Create conditional icons (specified blocks) instead of the hole diameter.
Number the drills to use the same numbers in the Drilling Table. Numbers can be displayed as Latin numbers or letters.
Create two overall dimensions for a part.
Indicate on the MLeaders the angles of inclination of the flat ends (saw blade inclination).
Designate the material (coating) of all visible surfaces of the part on MLeaders.
Designate edge materials on all ends of the part on MLeaders.
Using a template with substitutions, you can display any information about coatings and edge bandings, surface dimensions, edge lengths, properties of the part itself and the drawing on leaders.
Mark the width and depth of dadoes and grooves on the leaders.
For leaders from the middle of surfaces, you can replace the arrow with a dot.
Place a point (_Dot block) in the lower left corner of the part to indicate the origin of coordinates for the Drilling Table.
Can measure many details at once.
Can work in model space. All annotations will be in the XY plane of the world coordinate system.
Can work on sheets and measure all the details visible through the viewports.
When called through the viewport, the program can adapt the heights of all texts visible in the viewport (calling the Text Height Update command)
Program can be called together with NC Prepare and DXF Export commands.
You can customize which dimension and leader styles the program will use.
The program has several ready-made settings styles. You can create up to 9 more styles and quickly switch between them from the command line.
You can use layers, styles, and label blocks from the template file.
The program does not delete or modify the original solids in any way.
Read about downloading and installing the program here.
To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.
Then you can activate one of the licenses:
Annual license - 15 EUR.
Unlimited license - 75 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.
The trial period is 20 days.
Program limitations
The program is useless for mechanical products and other parts of complex shape.
The program works only with 3d solids, it cannot measure any other objects.
The program does not try to find a nice location for the dimensions. Many sizes can be stacked on top of each other.
The dimensions of cutouts, windows, chamfers and fillets are not set. Only 2 part dimensions. You can order the revision of the program.
Oblique drilling and blind drilling from the bottom of the part are not indicated.
The program does not work with custom coordinate systems.
The program does not work with details on ModelDoc (ViewBase) views and in viewports with perspective projection.
Operating procedure
It is required to lay out all the details in the XY plane in advance. The easiest way to do this is to use the LAY command.
After laying out, you can, if desired, rotate the parts around the Z axis, as you see fit. It is important to keep the bottom of the part on the XY plane.
Program settings can be found in the AvcOptions settings palette on Dimensions tab.
Select the laid out solids and call the DimDet command. You can also select viewports and the program will work with all the solids that are visible in them. If nothing is preselected, the command will prompt you to select. The prompt will have options to open the settings dialog and to quickly switch the style of the Dimensions command directly from the command line.
The command will analyze all solids, create MLedears, blocks and dimensions in accordance with the settings. And at the end, the command will display the number of processed parts on the command line.
If the command was called from the Model tab, then all annotations will be in the XY plane of the world coordinate system. Because of this, they will be hidden under the details and you will only see them in a wireframe visual style.
If the command is called from sheet tabs, then all annotations will be created in paper space, on top of the viewports. This will happen even if you entered the model through the viewport. The command maximizes the viewport on the screen and locks its scale.
Program settings
Options are available in the AvcOptions palette. You can also call the settings dialog from command line while calling the command.
All settings are combined into styles, and these styles can be quickly switched in the settings dialog or from the command line by style number. In the header of the settings window there are buttons for creating a new style based on the current one and for deleting unnecessary styles. A total of 9 settings styles can be created.
Each type of annotation can be disabled. You can set the MLeader style for all leaders. If the style is not set or does not exist in the drawing, then the current style will be used.
For dimensions, you can choose between a regular dimension style and a "from base" dimension style. If the From Base style is not specified, then the program itself modifies the regular style of linear dimensions to create dimension chains.
You can define templates with substitutions for leaders and hole sizes. In templates, you can use any substitution of surface properties, surface material, the part itself, or even drawing properties. Also in the template there can be special characters like %%c (diameter), \X - text wrapping under the dimension line, \P - line wrapping, and so on.
To display drill numbers as letters or Latin numerals, use the %number% substitution formatting.
The base point size is taken as the arrow size from the "from base" dimension style.
