newbie: dimensions text is huge!

I've just started out learning how to draw with autoCAD and right now
I've stumbled on the following problem.

I've created a small drawing and now I was in the process of adding
dimentions to it. The dimensions are added easily but the problem is
it's font size. They are so huge! I mean, each letter is almos as big
as the entire drawing.

So, what do I have to do to make the dimension label fonts resize to
become decent and readable?

Thanks in advance
Rui Maciel

 

Look up 'dimension styles' in the help and read up. There's a lot to learn
there.

 

Indeed there is.

So, after browsing throught the "dimensions" section of the help file I
stumbled on the DIMTXT and DIMSCALE system variables. It seems that
they define the size of the dimention's text and the arrow heads.

But is it the autoCAD way to do things? I mean, does the user have to
tweak by hand those values whenever he has to draw the dimension
objects?


Thanks in advance
Rui Maciel

 

That and a lot more. Sometimes the Dim text will be so small you can't see
it, then you have to enlarge it. Read up about drawing units as well. They
can also affect your text size.

 

What he said.

 

One of the things about CAD in general, and acad in particular is that it
demands an investment in time UP FRONT, and the payoff comes later, if at
all. I'm not sure that you ever stop finding ways to do things better and
faster and incorporating those discoveries into your work, though that curve
does flatten out after 10 years or so, so don't get too comfortable.

On dimensions style in particular, it's pretty common to develop a bunch of
them appropriate for different scales (for those who dimension in model
space, but that's another topic) and units, and to have ways of getting them
into your drawing (usually templates or blocks or both).

 

Rui

When I set up our templates I created the following Dimension Styles

ARCH_1TO10
ARCH_1TO100
ARCH_1TO1250
ARCH_1TO20
ARCH_1TO200
ARCH_1TO5
ARCH_1TO50
ARCH_1TO500

For Architects using a tick and the same but pre-noted ENG i.e.

ENG_1TO10 etc for Engineers with Arrows

Once you have defined your basic information it's a case of alteing
the scale factor to create the others.

The idea is to make any CAD system EasyCAD or LazyCAD for the enduser

HTH

cadalot
http://www.cadalot.co.uk