Dimension/Area has stopped working

[Carbonman]

I am trying to use the Dimension/Area feature and it does not work.

I used it yesterday and it worked quite well. I went to use it today and it does not work at all.

What worked yesterday was I created a shape (a closed shape made of straight lines), grouped it, clicked on it and voila' it entered an area dimension.

Today that does not work.

I tried the feature on an ungrouped version of the shape and that does not work either.

As so often happens to me when I have a mystery of this sort, I seem to lack understanding of some very basic terminology that seems to be perfectly obvious to everyone else.

I poked around in this forum and the instructions for implementing the Dimension/Area command said "select an object" and I realized that I do not precisely know what "an object" really is.

Is it a group of lines enclosing a shape? Is grouped set of lines and object?

So there is the what is an object question and...

There is the what am I doing wrong today that I did correctly yesterday question.

Help will be appreciated.

JP

[AlwMVMO]

An object is a POINT, LINE, CIRCLE, SHAPES, TEXT, DIMENSION, or SPLINE.

Area dimension works only on SHAPES, CIRCLE, or Closed SPLINE. 

You don't have to GROUP a SHAPE to dimension it.
It doesn't work with GROUPS anyways unless you go to Edit Picture under Edit tab / E function then dimension it.
(GROUP is under the Select tab / Gr function)
You can GROUP a SHAPE after you DIMENSION it, just select the SHAPE only.
If you have multiple objects to GROUP then use the Options box under the Select tab to have it only select the types of objects you want to group.

Other things to watch for is:
Check your Dimension text font, size, and color.
Create a new drawing and recreate your SHAPE.

If it's still not working can you e-mail us your DeltaCad .DC file to "[email protected]" e-mail?

[williamj]

Carbonman,

When forming shapes using lines and or arcs I almost always create a shape using 'Shapes - draw a polygon" using the connecting points of the line drawn shape. That way I have the functionality of a shape rather than just the functionality of lines.

[AlwMVMO]

If you do create a SHAPE on top of LINES it is possible that the SHAPE didn't get created or it missed one of the LINES where you were try to dimension.
Go to the EDIT tab / E function to see if the SHAPE is really there. You will see the SHAPE highlight when you hover your mouse over it