Improvements to commands that request distances and three new measurement commands

November 24, 2014 measure measure_line_perimeter measure_perp measure_segment

We have made a number of improvements in the commands: FILLET, TH, CIRCR, AD,  EQUIDISTANCE, ACT_SCALE, INC, PARALLEL, OVERLAP, TOL and TOL_ANG. These commands are characterized by the fact that at a certain point in their lifetime they ask the user to enter a measurement (by keyboard or by two points graphically measured in space). If the user chooses to digitize two points, these two points are free, that is, they have no restrictions. There is no way to force these two points to be perpendicular to a segment or any other type of restriction. The idea came from a user who asked through our technical support portal for a way to create a parallel line whose distance is the perpendicular distance between a point and the selected segment. We could have created a parallel line command for this, but why not also support the CIRCR? command, and why not the AD command? Someone might want to draw a circle whose radius is the perpendicular distance between a point and a line segment... The solution we have made is as follows:

  1. We have modified the commands AREA, MEASURE and MEASURE+ so that if they are executed while executing a command of the above mentioned commands that require us to enter a measure, they inject the measure into that command that was previously executed.

  2. We have created multiple new commands to inject measures:

    Order Description
    MEASURE_PERP Measures the distance between a point and the perpendicular to a selected segment of a model line.
    MEASURE_LINE_PERIMETER Measures the perimeter (in the plane) of a selected line.
    MEASURE_LINE_XYZ_PERIMETER Measures the perimeter of a selected line.
    MEASURE_SEGMENT Measures (on the plane) the selected segment.
    MEASURE_SEGMENT_XYZ Measures the selected segment.

The way of work is as follows:

  1. We execute a command from the ones listed above that requests a distance, for example PARALLEL. After selecting the line to which we want to make a parallel, the command PARALLEL does not ask us to enter the distance or measure two points.
  2. At that time, instead of digitizing any point or entering any distance, we execute any of the following commands: AREA, MEASURE, MEASURE+, MEASURE_PERP, MEASURE_LINE_PERIMETER or MEASURE_SEGMENT.
  3. We do what the command that we just executed tells us, such as measure two points, or select a line and measure a point....
  4. When we finish executing this measurement command, it will self-destruct and introduce the measure corresponding to the command we were executing previously (PARALLEL).
  5. We continue with our PARALLEL command, digitizing the dot to one side.

You can see this new feature in action in the video below: [youtube:http://youtu.be/pHHfvZSWyEA]

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