Using Grips to Make Minor Adjustments to Dimensions

Using Grips to Make Minor Adjustments to Dimensions
The definition points, whose location you can see through their grips, are located on their own
unique layer called Defpoints. Definition points are displayed regardless of whether the Defpoints
layer is on or off. To give you an idea of how these definition points work, try the following exercises, which show you how to directly manipulate the definition points.
In this exercise, you’ll use coordinates to move a dimension line:
1. With the grips visible, click the grip near the dimension text.
TIP Because the Defpoints layer has the unique feature of being visible even when turned off, you can use it as a layer for laying out your drawing. While Defpoints is turned off, you can still see objects assigned to it, but the objects won’t plot.
2. Move the cursor around. When you move the cursor vertically, the text moves along the
dimension line. When you move the cursor horizontally, the dimension line and text move
together, keeping their parallel orientation to the dimensioned floor plan.
TIP Here the entire dimension line, including the text, moves. In a later exercise, you’ll see how
you can move the dimension text independently of the dimension line.
3. Enter @9´<0↵. Metric users should enter @275<0↵. The dimension line, text, and dimension
extensions stretch to the new location to the right of the text (see Figure 12.8).



TIP If you need to move several dimension lines, select them all at the Command prompt; then,
Shift+click one set of dimension-line grips from each dimension. After you’ve selected the grips,
click one of the hot grips again. You can then move all the dimension lines at once.
In step 3 of the previous exercise, you saw that you can specify an exact distance for the dimensionline’s new location by entering a relative polar coordinate. Cartesian coordinates work just as well. You can even use object snaps to relocate dimension lines.
Next, try moving the dimension line back by using the Perpendicular osnap:
1. Click the grip at the bottom of the dimension line you just edited.
2. Shift+click the right mouse button, and choose Perpendicular from the Osnap shortcut menu.
3. Place the cursor on the vertical dimension line that dimensions the balcony and click it.
4. Choose View  Zoom All, and then choose File  Save to save this file in its current state.
The selected dimension line moves to align with the other vertical dimension, back to its original
location.