Hi eric,

> When you get around to dimensions please have a quick look at Sketchup's dimensions for
> 3d models. Just what I often need.
>
> I am not a Sketchup fan but they did get this right.

That involves one of the big decisions to make - whether dimension text should be always be displayed as simple vertical "on screen" text, or whether the text should behave more like an object itself and get viewed at different angles.

SketchUp does it the "always vertical on screen" way and Rhino and AutoCAD (and I guess a lot of other "traditional" CAD programs) do it the other way with the text being made up of lines and curves that have their own orientation in model space.

So in SketchUp you get a look like this:



While in Rhino things look more like this, note the difference on the text:




When you zoom out, in SketchUp the text remains at the same size no matter what zoom level you are at, this can lead to some crowding:



In Rhino, the text is associated with a model space size and when you zoom out the text goes smaller as well. This helps avoid crowding but the text can also get illegible as well:




When zooming in, the SketchUp text again remains the same (it's always the same no matter what zoom level):




In Rhino the text gets pretty big when you zoom in on it, this tends to be kind of strange:




So the question is, does the SketchUp style of "always facing you" text work ok for what you need or does that create problems for certain circumstances?

- Michael