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

Dimension witness linetype control

Dave Jochum
Advocate
A long-standing wish (2003) revived: the ability to control the linetype of individual witness lines, such as a choosing a centerline type. My workaround has forever been: Place dimension--Eliminate witness line (via re-sizing so I don't have to go into the settings box)--Select centerline from favorites palette--Draw centerline--Re-select dimension tool--Repeat. Time consuming and clumsy, and when the centerline dimensioned item moves, the "fake" witness line doesn't move with it--unless you group, and that is troublesome as well.
Dave Jochum
J o c h u m A R C H I T E C T S http://www.jochumarchitects.com
MBP 16" (M1 Max) 64 GB•OS 13.5.2•AC 27 Silicon (latest build)
9 REPLIES 9
Erika Epstein
Booster
Dave,
Don't forget to vote in your own poll
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System

"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"
Anonymous
Not applicable
From our office of 26 licenses: The deficient ability to dimension to a center line issue comes up a lot when discussing efficiencies and/or frustrations. Its seem like the Dimension tool needs better independent control over witness lines and head. Often we'll have long dimension strings, primarily to face of stud/conc. (solid line and ticks) with several interstitial center line dimensions (w/ center line and solid dot) per the industry graphic standards

We currently use a similar and cumbersome work around (mentioned by Dave Jochum below), by drawing an independent center line and dimensioning to this. However this is not ideal since they are not parametrically linked.

Anyone know of any better solutions/workarounds or whether Graphisoft has any plans to reconfigure the dimension tool in the near future?
Erika Epstein
Booster
better?
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System

"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"
Dave Jochum
Advocate
Erika--With all due respect, I'm not following your post. The issue is the inability to set the witness line linetype. With respect to where this comes into play, I personally never dimension to the centerline of a wall. Centerline dimensions are usually to doors and windows for me.
Dave Jochum
J o c h u m A R C H I T E C T S http://www.jochumarchitects.com
MBP 16" (M1 Max) 64 GB•OS 13.5.2•AC 27 Silicon (latest build)
Erika Epstein
Booster
Dave,
I thought he was also asking about a live centerline dimension point, but my mistake.
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System

"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Agree Dave. Essential. Glad you revived this... it is an example of the various things we all have to do to get documents out that result in workarounds that are not linked to the model and thus subject to error. GS needs to stop introducing new features until the essentials for documentation production with the existing tools are all "live".

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Dave Jochum
Advocate
I agree completely, Karl. Won't sound sexy to the marketing dept., but the eventual accolades from the users will when they get the tools dialed in.
Dave Jochum
J o c h u m A R C H I T E C T S http://www.jochumarchitects.com
MBP 16" (M1 Max) 64 GB•OS 13.5.2•AC 27 Silicon (latest build)
Anonymous
Not applicable
Absolutely agree that this is essential. Using elevation dimensions, calling out floor elevations, I would like to be able to stretch a dashed witness line across the elevation drawing.
genarch
Enthusiast

Better late than never? I'd like to also put up a feature request to control the line type of a dimension witness line. It would be particularly helpful for when dimensioning to the center of an object (wall, window, door, etc.).

Mac OSX 11.6.8

AC26, Artlantis 2020, TwinMotion

iMac Pro 2017 / 8-core 3.2 GHz / 32GB RAM