Best dimension settings for buildable plans?

[ChiefCooper]

What are the best settings for dimensions? The builder would like to see outside corners and center points on the exterior, and center points on the interior.  Every combination I have tried comes up with an unreadable mashup of overlapping dimensions.  Any help is appreciated.  Thank you. 

[DBCooper]

It's pretty easy to setup your automatic dimensions to locate centers on interior walls.  Just go into your current dimension defaults, go to "locate auto exterior", and change your setting for interior walls to use "centers" instead of "primary side".

 

If you want to see "outside corners and center points" for exterior walls, I don't think you can do this automatically.  You can always edit your auto dimensions and add extra locations (which will convert them into manual dimensions) but that feels like a bit of work and it seems like it would make your plans pretty busy.

 

[ValleyGuy]

On 2/21/2026 at 10:39 AM, ChiefCooper said:

What are the best settings for dimensions? The builder would like to see outside corners and center points on the exterior, and center points on the interior.  Every combination I have tried comes up with an unreadable mashup of overlapping dimensions.  Any help is appreciated.  Thank you. 

After framing for many years, I can't ever remember wanting to use the center of an exterior wall to measure from. Having said that, I am guessing that the "center points on the exterior" would possibly mean the centers of openings??? One point of grief I had when framing was having too many fragments in a dimension line. The logistics of framing are to build the exterior and bearing walls first, and then come back later after the roof is built for the non-bearing interior walls. I hated having to add up two or three closet walls and a bathroom wall to place the next window opening. Likewise, on the back frame; I already had the window openings framed, why do I need to add up those fragments to get to the interior wall measurement? I find adding unnecessary fragment measurements a waste of time and more room to make an error. I decided to dimension my plans from a framer's perspective.

 

Here is how I addressed the issue of having clear framing measurements without too much overlap. 

 

I set up my Floor Plan Dimensioned saved plan views to use RED for all exterior wall framing and Blue for all interior wall framing - usually larger text for dimension lines outside the building envelope, and smaller text for interior dimension lines. This method helps to keep more dimension lines outside of the busy building area. I manually use Orange for things like deck framing. Each specific dimension uses it's own defaults. My building officials do not mind multi coloured plans so this works well in my area.

 

I'm not sure how well you know Chief, so my apologies if you don't need the recipe...

1) I made separate layer lines in the Layer Set. Each Dimension Line has it's own text line as well (with it's own size, colour, line thickness). Some examples are: Red, Blue Outside, Blue Inside, Orange, Gray, Green, ... I made specific dimension lines for all of the specific Layer Sets as I thought necessary. 

2) Set the Dimension Defaults (little wrench icon) for each. This is where you choose all the things that you want the dimension line to locate (and not locate), text to use, line colour/size, format, arrow, extension length, etc... The Auto Locate makes magic appear with one click - powerful time saving tool !

3) Toggle on / off the layer lines in the specific Layer Sets. Example: only toggle on the Floor Plan Dimension lines in the Floor Plan Dimensioned Layer Set. This will stop any unwanted stray dimensions from appearing in the layout. Example: If I want to measure something on my Working Plan saved plan view, they will not show up on my Main Floor Plan Dimensioned saved plan view that gets sent to the layout. 

4) In the Project Browser, for each Saved Plan View, right click to Edit the Selected Defaults to use for that specific Layer Set, Dimensions, Text, etc. This will automatically attach one specific Dimension to that chosen Saved Plan View. I have the Active Dimension Default Control tool on my tool bar to quickly change between the different dimensions - this allows me to stay on the Main Floor saved plan view and use the Red Auto or Blue Interior or Manual Orange dimensions. It really is supper fast to change back and forth.

 

I've included a foundation plan with the dimensions in RED and the diagonal dimensions in BLUE. 

I picked this Main Floor Plan because it is fairly busy with information but still shows the framing dimension information in a manor that is very useful in a clear and easy way to read.

Making plans easy to use for the trades has proven to be a fantastic marketing tool.

 

Hope this helps