Dimensions in Detail Differences with Punch!

When walls are displayed they are optionally auto-dimensioned - that is, the program automatically adds the dimensional length of the wall to the display. It even adds two such lengths when there are doors or windows in the wall - one overall length and the individual lengths of the door/window centerlines along the wall. Dimensions in Detail does that just as Punch! does.

Background: There are essentially two classes of wall joins: there are glommed walls, where the end of one wall is joined permanently to an end of the next wall, so that they necessarily have a single common end-point, and there are other joins, where the end of a wall is simply parked in the vicinity of the middle or the end of another wall. Glommed walls can only join end-to-end, one-to-one, and may (but don't have to) form a loop or cycle of walls. The exterior wallset is such a loop, required to be a loop in order to make certain Punch! features work. Also, auto-dimensions may track the center of the wall they measure, or either of the wall surfaces (it can be switched from one side to the other by option on a wall-by-wall basis). For the purposes of this discussion a wall participates in an unglommed join if the endpoint is within the wall's half-thickness of the centerline or endpoints of another wall.

Punch!'s auto-dimensions are not accurate in certain cases:

• If two glommed walls meet at an angle other than 90 degrees, then the surface measurements on either side for either wall are incorrect.
• If two walls meet but are not glommed, then dimensions will be inaccurate to the extent that the endpoint of the measured wall does not exactly meet the other wall's centerline or end-point. In addition, the wall join may exhibit "cracks" in the plan, particularly when they meet at other than a right angle.
• In the case where two non-glommed walls join and the end point does coincide with the other wall, edge-to-edge measurements will be off by half the wall's thickness or more.

Dimensions in Detail was specifically engineered to correct these problems. All wall dimensions, around glommed or non-glommed joins, are correctly measured, and the joins, glommed or not, are correctly drawn. At this writing, there is one additional problem remaining in Dimensions in Detail, as demonstrated on the left. The wall dimension that has a non-glommed join in the middle of it ignores it. This is not an inaccuracy (the dimension is correct), but it is not what a user would expect, and will be fixed in a future update).

Finally, Punch! version 8.0 and forward has added options to increase their units coverage. The unit values that are available under this regime and those from Dimensions in Detail differ in the following ways:

• The possible dimensions options are more restrictive in Punch!; essentially, in english units, fractional inches down the the 1/16" level are available; in decimal, only the exact decimal equivalents of the fractions are available. For example, 1/3" is rounded to 5/16 (as it would be in Dimensions in Detail), but the decimal equivalent is displayed as .3125" rather than .3333". In metric, only .0001 meter, .01 cm and .1 mm resolution/formats are offered, all with the unit name in the measurement.
• Punch! allows for selection of angle formats, with 1-4 place accuracy to the right of the decimal point.
• Punch! selections modify the display in dimensions and in properties boxes, while Dimensions in Detail can only affect plan dimensions.

Dimensions in Detail and the contents of this help file are
Copyright©2006 by ThistleKeep Engineering; all rights are reserved.
Comments and suggestions, as well as support, are entertained at Lmc@ThistleKeep.com.
"Punch!" and other titles of Punch! operations are trademarks of Punch! Software L.L.C.