CAD Forum

Hi all,
I am struggling with a viewing issue in SW. My structure is a pipe Wye branch where three cones of pipes intersect each other and are traced by three steel girder beams along the interaction lines. This structure is shown in following figure. Section BB is taken along the shown path as a three-point section. Since I am producing a fabrication drawing, I want dimension of the this ring girder but SW doesn't allow me to do so? How can I fix this?

I think the problem is that your section is not normal to the feature.

If what you are trying to dimension to is not a primitive shape (conic, torus, etc.) then Solidworks will not dimension to it. We've struggled with this trying to dimension to tangents of silhouette edges of B-spline surfaces in drawings. IMO it's a fundamental flaw in how Solidworks does drawing views.

Do you get this dialog when trying to select an edge when dimensioning? The most common work around I've heard is to add sketches in the model, which I find ridiculous for the model to need sketches for every place that a b-spline surface on the component might be dimensioned to.