It sounds like that you are drawing a technical drawing of some sort. For something like a technical drawing, I always feel that it would be best for you to directly use autocad or another 3d cad program.

Egads.

> It sounds like that you are drawing a technical drawing of some sort. For something like a technical drawing, I always feel that it would be best for you to directly use autocad or another 3d cad program.

Well, there you go, guys. Another blunderbuss piece of bad advice, based upon a defensive reaction to another glaring ommission in Illustrator's feature set. You're only supposed to use Autocad or another 3D CAD program for:

Commercial product renderings.
Illustrated parts breakdowns.
Illustrations in technical manuals.
Illustrations in how-to articles.
Product instructions sheets.
Maps.
Real estate development brochures.
Flow diagrams.
Data charts.
And worlds of other things that can be loosely referred to as "technical" illustration.

Time to throw away all those tech-ish drawings in your project archives, and start responsibly turning down any new clients who make and/or sell something because you don't have Autocad or another 3D CAD program. I know I have at least a 4' horizontal file drawer full of "something like a technical drawing" project archives I can now trash.

"I'm sorry, sir. We are a professional illustration and design house. You need to go to a mechanical engineering firm for your product brochure. However, should you ever need a nicely-done paper doily, here's my card. See? It's done with Illustrator's Blob and Eraser tools. Even has a Lens Flare in the corner...."

I know that concept may seem commensurate with certain ommissions in Illustrator's tool set that are present in just about every other program in Illustrator's category (like simple dimension tools, user-defined ruler scales, connector lines, object dimensions without chronic rounding problems), but it's still an utterly ridiculous assertion.

Of course, there are similarly obvious feature ommissions in Illustrator's loosey-goosey, artsy-tartsy feature set as well (a proper path cutting tool, auto-fitting text frames, radar and contour grads). So by the same logic any kind of artistically-sensitive work should be done in Xara Xtreme.

Get with the program, people. Use the appropriate tools. Illustrator is for paper doilies. Just paper doilies. ;-)

[Sorry, Isaac. Just kidding. But also had a point to make.]

Stan,

Illustrator's 20+ years development has neglected many basic generic features including basic dimension tools. If it's a frequent need, there are expensive aftermarket plug-in add-ons that can cost over half of Illustrator's price all over again. Or, you can buy a competitive side-grade to Corel Draw or Deneba Canvas for about the same cost and get a whole lot more in the deal to boot.

If your need to dimension a few things is very basic and relatively infrequent, you might find useful the simple Javascript-based workaround I hacked out for my own purposes, which you can download here.

It's crude and limited, but reduces the tedium for simple linear dimensions, compared to constructing them by hand. The script assumes a couple of Graphic Styles being present (included in the .zip), so be sure to read the included instructions.



JET