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