Starting with Advance Steel 2011, manual dimensions can be updated after any geometry change that affects their value. This behavior applies in most situations, when certain snap points are used during the manual dimension, while other snap points are not supported. If a snap point is not accepted by the smart manual dimension update, then Advance Steel will display the following error message after the line is created:
"Error: Unable to recognize all points. Some Points will be deleted after detail"
The cases supported by the manual smart dimensions are the following:
C) Midpoints - when they are taken on edges perpendicular on the dimension direction.
Note: after update, the snap points that were taken on the midpoint move to the closest dimension line end point of the object on which the midpoint was initially chosen, location change does not affect the correct dimension value.
If the midpoint is taken on an edge which is not perpendicular on the dimension direction, then the dimension points are removed after update.
Using smart dimensions with center snap points on hole/bolt patterns can be done in the following two cases:
- If any of the two points is incorrectly picked, then it will be removed during the update without affecting the other dimension points in that chain.
- Any additional hole/bolt center snap points chosen from in between the extremities, as long as we do not choose all of them (see next point), are removed during update without affecting the correct snap points.
2. The dimension line is created on all the holes/bolts forming a pattern.
In this case, if additional bolts/holes are added to the pattern, the manual smart dimension will update and dimension these bolts/holes as well, even if a point for them was not picked during the initial dimension creation.
