Solid Works dimensioning hassle

session savage

Lets say I draw a simple cube 1000mm wide. and I fillet the edges to a radius of, lets say 5mm. If i do a drawing of that box, when I try to dimension the overall size of the box solidworks usually highlights and dimensions the fillet edge (even though I dont display filleted edges in my drawing as they are irrelevant to me). this means that instead of dimensioning the cube width of 1000 it dimensions the filletted edge of 990.
Obviously what I'm drawing is more complex than a cube and zooming in to select the proper line is driving me insane.
Is there a setting on solidworks that will make the program select the displayed line I want to dimension and not some stupid filleted edge.
Hope I explained myself ok.
By the way, I'm running Solid Works 2009 SP0.0
Thanks people.
Savage.

Paddy001

Can you not just select two points which are relevant and measure that? Use the smart dimension for it? You don't really need to zoom in just hover near the point and it turns green then click it

session savage

No that doent really make it any easier.
The fillets that are causing the promlems are on all edges, so even selecting points can be frustrating as the program wants to select the points on the fillet and not the outermost point.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

Thewanderer_ie

I have had the same problem many times. I have mainly just got into the habit of selecting the 2 sides of the part you want to dimension and dragging the dimension up, you should almost always be able to do this easily unless your part is more complex than most.
If you really can't pick your two points or sides, then do this:
1. Create the drawing and place your views on it.
2. Return to your model and suppress the fillets/chamfers/other annoying bits.
3. Go to drawing, dimension everything you need.
4. Back to model, unsuppress everything.
5. Back to drawing, dimension annoying bits.

Sounds like a lot, but it is quick enough to do with a bit of practise.;)

Jeff

session savage

Thats a good idea thewanderer, the only promlem is that the drawings I'm creating are done with the weldments feature and i would have to edit the sketches for each weldment feature.. still I'll try that and see if it makes things any easier.
Thanks