Measure Tube Length Steps

See also Measurement Tips.

Insert in Working with Advanced Measurements

Measure tube length

1. Open the Advanced Measurements menu on the 3D Document Toolbar. (Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the Linear icon to see the menu of commands.)

2. Select Tube Length.

   

   The Tube Length Measurement dialog box provides the following options:

   1. Auto Complete - Signals SpinFire to automatically traverse the pipe — following all the straights and bends — to determine its length. Selected by default.

   

   1. Lock tool - Select to use the command more than once.

   2. Hyperlink - Enter a link to a file or to a document and user view within the current file.

3. Position your cursor on the starting arc or circle and single-click. (Selectable arcs and circles are highlighted as you mouse over them.) The selected arc or circle remains highlighted.

4. Position your cursor on the ending arc or circle.

   1. Click once to see a highlighted line that indicates the shortest distance between the two arcs.

   2. Double-clickto accept the measurement and see the markup label.

5. Position the markup, then click once. The highlighted line changes color to indicate that the measurement is complete.

   

6. At this point, you have the following options:

   1. Click Copy to copy the markup content to the Windows clipboard.

   2. Click Export… to save the markup content to a .csv file. (See also Create a tube length bill of materials on this page.)

   3. Click Stop when you’re finished taking multiple measurements.

   4. Click Close (or X) to end the command and close the dialog box.

Recommendation

To find arcs and circles more easily, select your model and render as Smooth with Edges. See also Measurement Tips.

Create a tube length bill of materials

After completing a tube length measurement (see Measure tube length on this page), you can create a bill of materials by exporting the results to a .csv file. A bill of materials contains the following information:

• Length

• Diameter

• Arc1 Center XYZ

• Arc2 Center XYZ

• BendRadius

• BendAngleDegrees

• BendCenter XYZ

• Intersection XYZ

• Total length

Note

Differing Diameters - If the diameter of the tube changes along its course, values in the tube length bill of materials may be incorrect.

Unicode Characters - Because the .csv format is simply that of a text delimited file, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and Korean characters cannot be properly represented. Tube length results in these languages will be exported in English.

To create a tube length bill of materials:

1. After completing a tube length measurement, click the Export… button.

   

2. Enter a file name.

3. Click the Save button.

Alternatively,

1. On the Markups list, right-click on a tube length measurement.

2. Select Export… in the context menu.

   

3. Enter a file name.

4. Click the Save button.