Enhancing your design review measurement with the Accudraw compass

 Design review comes with some pretty cool features and gives you the ability to do a bunch of things in a web browser against a federated disparate design set. There is a not so hidden feature sitting there onscreen when you measure. You may not have noticed but if you are a Bentley design tool user you would have recognized an old friend immediately.

The Accudraw compass. This fantastic tool is available in design review. Accudraw is a floating compass that you control. It has many uses but perhaps the most powerful is the ability to rotate the compass to an element and lock axes.

As an example, we are reviewing a building design and measuring the distance from a roof edge to the edge of the floor. The roof edge and the floor aren’t orthogonal (aligned with a view), and they are not on the same z elevation either. Clicking between them will give me a sloping distance and the snap points are guaranteed not to line up.

Not a problem with Accudraw’s help.

First we’ll grab the measure distance tool

Then we’ll click our start point

My next measurement point isn’t orthogonal. To get to my next measurement point, I need to rotate the accudraw compass and lock in the axis so I don’t get a sloping distance.

To do that I enter the E key on my keyboard.

That allows me to rotate accudraw to an element. I can move my cursor around and select the element that provides the rotation I need to get aligned with my object.

Once I have my element I left click to accept.

Now I need to lock my axis so I don’t get a sloping measurement.

Like everything there are a couple of ways to do this, but let’s keep it simple.

I move my mouse out away from the compass so that I get a solid white line along the correct axis.

And hit the ENTER key on my keyboard.

This locks the tool to only allowing you to move along a single axis, the one that you moved out on.

Now no matter where my cursor goes my measurement will only follow along 1 axis.

I can now place my final measurement point to complete my measurement.

Getting a start on Accudraw in design review can be a little confusing at first. Until you get the hang of it, I suggest you always click the element select tool first, then the measure distance tool as some of the viewing tools can interfere a little.

Full list of Accudraw shortcuts in design review -

Enter – Lock the axis you are on

X – Lock the X axis in rectangular mode

Y – Lock the Y axis in rectangular mode

Z – Lock the Z axis in rectangular mode

A – Lock the angle in polar mode

D – Lock the distance in polar mode

M – Change compass mode (Rectangular or polar)

T – Rotate compass to top

F – Rotate compass to front

S – Rotate compass to side

V – Rotate compass to view

O – Set origin of compass

C – Cycle compass rotation

Q – Rotate compass by axes

E – Rotate compass to element

R – Rotate compass by points (Define ACS by points)