dimension line disappears

[jmartinarch]

A strange thing started happening. I am placing dimensions for foundation plan.

When I cross a wall with dimension the line is hidden by the wall. It reappears on other side of wall. I sent the wall to the back and dimension to the front but no change.

Using the line tool, the same also happens.

[AlanW]

I'd say you probably have the dimension and the wall on different Design Layers.

[jmartinarch]

Alan you are correct. Different design layers. I did not know that dimensions would behave this way. I have partial basement so there is a full height conc wall. That wall needs to be visible on basement floor plan, and also on foundation plan. So I'm trying to figure out which layer is best suited for it.

Some walls are full height and some are not. Perhaps I need to class them differently and put on foundation layer then I can make invisible the ones not needed in basement floor plan view.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

[rDesign]

If you place your dimensions in Sheet Layer VP Annotations instead of on the Design Layer, your dimensions could be sent to the Front and would not be obscured by walls as you discovered.

As Alan noted, any objects, text, dimensions on a Lower DL (like a basement) will be obscured by anything on an Upper DL. This is all controlled by the Stacking Order of your Design Layers, which you can also override in a SLVP.

[jmartinarch]

Thanks Tim.

So is that typical practice to place dims in the SL VP? What happens when you revise the plan and move objects?

[AlanW]

If you are trying to have 2 design layers showing in the viewport you will either need to mask some of the walls below, turn them off or have a Design layer for the foundations and one for above and just turn on and off the classes you need.

Or duplicate the wall and place it on both design layers so no overlap.

I keep all the dimension in the design layer except for say details and stuff that causes problems to turn on and off in the design layer.

HTH

Edited August 28, 2015 by Alan Woodwell

[rDesign]

The others might start chasing me with pitchforks if I dare say that it's 'standard practice', but I typically do put dimensions in SLVP Annotations. The main reason I no longer put dimensions on a DL is that it complicates things when you try to dimension multiple scales of plans.

Before SLVP annotations worked as well as they do now, I used to make separate DLs for annotations: Demo, Floor Plan, Electrical / Lighting, Plumbing, RCP, Finishes, etc. Now I just use separate SLVP annotations for all of that.

If you use associative dimensions in SLVP annotations, theoretically they should update when you move the associated DL object. I say 'theoretically' because at the moment I can't remember what happens when you have multiple associative dimensions in different scaled SLVPs referencing the same DL object.

Vw 2015 Help : Creating Annotations for Sheet Layer Viewports