When I have a in space turned rectangle, in the right upper windows is not shown the real size, but the size in x,y,z space.

Is there a possibility to show the real size of a planar, but not orthogonal polyline in space, when I look perpendicular on it.

Rudl

Hi Rudl, I'm sorry but I'm not really understanding what you are asking about... how do you mean "real size" versus x,y,z space size? Doesn't the real world have x,y,z coordinates as well?

Do you mean you need to set a unit system so you have a connection between MoI's x,y,z coordinates and a physical size? To do that you can set a unit system under Options > General > Unit system.

So for example if you want something 1 unit in width in x,y,z coordinates to correspond to 1 centimeter in physical size, set the unit system to centimeters.

- Michael

Ah, I think I get what you mean, you want local measurements of an object rather than it's "world axis oriented" bounding box size, is that correct? Sorry I did not understand properly at first.

Probably the easiest way to do that currently is to draw in lines for directions that you want to measure, and then select each line, when a single line is selected its length is shown in the upper right area of the window, not it's bounding box size so that may help you get what you need.

In the future I want to put in various types of measuring tools but just drawing in lines and selecting each one can probably get what you need currently.

- Michael

Or also you can draw in a new rectangle, while you are drawing the rectangle it will show width and height of the one you are currently drawing, if you use rectangle 3 point you can snap the points onto the rectangle you want to measure and look at the width and height for the current drawn rectangle, and push Escape to cancel that command before placing the last point.

If you want to do it this way you may want to turn up the display precision under Options > General > Decimal display, by default the display will be rounded to 2 decimal places.

- Michael

Thank you for answer.

The workaround with the single lines I already discovered.

But always to sign a single line or a rectangle is a little bit wasteful.

I attach two pictures to show what I mean. I would need this possibility, because I want to construct and build up a irregular geodesic dome, and the plates I have are not broader then 50cm.

Rudl

Hi Rudl, it's also possible to just draw the line and look at the distance readout in the bottom toolbar (it's just underneath the x,y,z control that shows the x,y,z coordinates of the current point).

When you're drawing a line the current length is displayed there, and then push escape to cancel the command and not actually create any line, that way there's not any "waste".

There is also a plug-in that you can install which will make a new command available called CustomDistance which lets you pick 2 points and then tells you the distance but does not create any line. You can get that here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#MeasureDistance

- Michael

And Helpers Lines + numeric keys board ? ;)

Helperlines are also very wasteful. One click on the 2D Polyline and the option to see the measurements of the 2D bounding box instead of the 3D would be the best.

Rudl

Hi Rudl,

> One click on the 2D Polyline and the option to see the measurements of the
> 2D bounding box instead of the 3D would be the best.

The basic problem is that on arbitrary oriented objects, it can be come difficult to automatically decide which specific direction should equate to "width" and which should be "height". And you will get different numbers depending on which particular directions are picked, so it's an easy thing to result in very confusing reported sizes if the directions happened to be different than what you were expecting.

Sorry, I'm not understanding the part about "one click on the 2d polyline" - you want one click on the polyline drawing tool to tell you measurements instead of doing polyline drawing?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

not on the tool, but on the already drawn polyline itself.

Arbitrary in space, but it has it´s width and hight on the 2D plane where it exists. I see , that it is difficult to define the x,y direction. Maybe coloured numbers correspondending with lines in the same colour in x and y direction of the bounding box.

Rudl

Hi Rudl,

> not on the tool, but on the already drawn polyline itself.

The length of the current segment being drawn is displayed already in the distance control in the bottom toolbar here:




> Arbitrary in space, but it has it´s width and hight on the 2D plane where it exists.

An abstract plane is defined by a point and a normal direction - meanwhile "width" and "height" only make sense when there are specific x and y axis directions set up, and there are infinitely many different x and y axis directions that live in any one single plane.


> I see , that it is difficult to define the x,y direction. Maybe coloured numbers correspondending
> with lines in the same colour in x and y direction of the bounding box.

The problem is more about what if the x and y axis directions that happen to be used are not in the right directions for the kind of measurement that you want.

- Michael