Measure straight distance between 2 lines

[jowyspeedy2]

Hello all,

I just started using this program that is very nice.
I want to measure the distance between two parallel lines or between a line and a point (shortest distance). Is there any way of doing this?

Something that measures the distance in the different coordinates would be great.

Thanks!

[wmayer]

Unfortunately, there is currently no GUI tool to measure this exactly. All what we have is to measure the distance between to freely chosen points. So, if we pick carefully two points on the lines then you get at least a rough value of the distance.

[helo10]

Hmm, that could be something I'm able to implement,
What would be the place for it?
Extend Measurement Tool or as add to draft dimensions

[wmayer]

I'm planning to implement an own module for this. I think we can have a menu "Measurement" where we can add the commands to. See also: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mantisbt/f ... php?id=503
I'll start the implementation after 0.13 is out.

[helo10]

alright,I'm gone wait till you'll have begon with that

[yorik]

helo10, if you want to wet your fingers a bit before that, this functionality would not be too hard to add to the draft dimension... There is already a mechanism to pick 2 lines (with ALT pressed), that is used to make angular dimensions. What would need to be done is, after the 2 lines are picked, detect if they are parallel, and if yes, instead of displaying the temporary arc dimension tracker, display the straight one, and call the Draft.makeDimension() instead of Draft.makeAngularDimension() afterwards.

I can do that myself too, but I'm full of work here, and probably won't be able to touch freecad much during a couple of weeks...

[helo10]

sounds good, thanks Yorik

[helo10]

had little or rather big problems getting in parametric-mode/altmode till I remembered norman's post viewtopic.php?f=9&t=484&start=10#p22607

Maybe there should be a hint on the wiki page for gnome users like me