Key Settings For New Dimension Styles

The changes you make in custom dimension styles will depend on the type of drawings that you want to create.

some settings may be dictated by accepted drafting standards.
other settings may be dictated in office standards established by the company that you work for.
each drawing unit (i.e. mm vs inches) has unique requirements.

There are so many different settings to consider that an attempt to review all of them could be counter-productive.

this section addresses some of the more important settings that you are likely to change for common applications.

Defining new dimension styles

You define new dimension styles in the active drawing with Dimstyle (Dimension Style Manager) by picking the New button in this box.

enter a new style name then select an existing style (e.g. Standard) to start with.

You normally type a name of your choice for the new style but if you do not type a new name it will remain as “Copy of [start with name]”.

You should leave Use for set to All dimensions unless you want to explicitly create a sub style for specific dimension types.

When you pick Continue you are prompted to modify dimension variable settings and these settings are arranged on logical tabs.

Settings are also arranged logically on each tab with reasonable descriptions beside them

when you change settings you will see the impact of the change in the preview pane.

You can experiment with dimension settings without having to know very much about a particular setting before hand.

if your changes lead to unexpected results in the preview simply pick Cancel to avoid making any changes.

Lines & Arrows

Mechanical drawings normally use a Closed filled arrowhead

whereas architectural drawings normally use an Architecturaltick or Oblique arrowhead
and you can change Extend beyond ticks to a non-zero value (e.g. equal Arrow size) if you use architectural style arrowheads.

Arrow size is normally set to match the value used for Text height (the size that you would want to measure in an actual plot).

Baseline spacing sets the space between dimensions when you use the Dimbaseline command (set this before making dimensions).

The Extension beyond dim lines distance controls how far the extension lines extend beyond the dimension lines.

The Offset from origin distance controls how close the extension lines get to the dimension origin points.

Center Marks for Circles can be either Mark, Line or None and this affects radial & diameter dimensions for CIRCLEs & ARCs.

Standard & ISO-25 dimension styles use the Standard text style for dimension text (it does not matter which text style is current).

the Standard text style uses a TXT.shx font which was designed to display & Plot with maximum speed (not to look good).
you can use Style to define a text style with an attractive font (e.g. Arial) then select this text style for the dimension style.
use a standard font that is likely to be installed on other computers if you plan to distribute your drawings to others.

You should use a value for text height according to the height of text that you would want to measure in an actual plot.

(Vertical) Text Placement controls whether the dimension text is Above or Centered (inserted in) dimension lines.

Text Alignment controls whether dimension text is Horizontal or Aligned with dimension line.

The most important setting on the Fit tab is the Scale for Dimension Features (the descriptions for other settings are relatively intuitive).

this controls the size of dimension features (e.g. text height, arrow size, etc..) when you Plot.
this does NOT change dimension text values (e.g. distance).