Do your designs ever change?  If the answer is “no”…then move along to someone else’s blog.  If the answer is “yes!”  (which I’m pretty sure is ALL of you) – then you’ll probably want to hang out here a little bit longer and learn more about parametric dimensions (assuming you haven’t already discovered these priceless little gems yourself).

For most of AutoCAD’s long life – we’ve been adding dimensions to our drawings that are driven by the geometry selected.  We change the objects – the dimensions update (ideally).  

These standard dimensions are all well and fine – and have worked for us for years.  But In the meantime -  most of the newer design software products that entered the world (such as Revit or Inventor) were blessed with much smarter parametric dimensions.  These dimensions were so clever, you could change the geometry simply by changing the dimension value (insert sound of the angels here!).

I won’t lie…I was jealous.  I had Dimension Envy.

And then the AutoCAD Heavens opened up and bestowed upon us -  Parametric Dimensions.  It was a truly momentous day!

Using these nifty smarter dimensions meant we could change our minds about our designs as many times as we wanted.  A simple double click on the dimension allowed us to change the value – which in turn modified the AutoCAD geometry (insert sound of the angels yet again!).

So check out my Cadalyst video – and see for yourself how easy it is to use Parametric dimensions, as opposed to those boring, standard dimensions of yesteryear!