Easiest way to Dimension a drawing?

I have an architectural drawing in PS and need to dimension it. It is drawn to scale. How do I do this the easiest way in PS?

Jules

TIA

I guess you have a photo of architectural drawing, don't you?

Also I do not think you can call dimensions in PS

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Camera in bag tends to stay in bag...

JulesJ said:

I have an architectural drawing in PS and need to dimension it. It is drawn to scale. How do I do this the easiest way in PS?

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I am not at all sure what you mean.

If you have a photo of an architectural drawing, the architectural drawing may be to scale, but that does not necessarily mean that the photo is to scale. Are you sure that the photo is to scale too?

What do you mean by "dimension it"? Are you talking about putting measurements on the various parts of the drawing? Perhaps you could give an example to explain.

It depends... We'll assume that the easiest way is not an option - that is that you are unable to open the file in whatever s/w was used to create the drawing in the first place. PS doesn't include tools for applying dimensions in the same way that a CAD s/w would. If you only need to apply a few dimensions and you know the precise dimension of one distance on your image one way would be to create a new layer and simply apply lines and text. If you have to EXTRACT dimensions from your image it is possible by cutting a piece out of the image file, determining the length of the piece in pixels and then multiplying that length in pixels by a scale factor. This might not be accurate enough, like I said: it depends. I routinely use this scale factor to drop pieces of one image into another but I would certainly never attempt to dimension a drawing that way (since I have several CAD packages to do that). If all you are trying to do is add a rough length, width and height you could do that (as long as you flag your dimensions as being +/- some factor to let whomever is reviewing the result that what they are viewing isn't REALLY a dimensional drawing).

Hi Jules

Here are the steps you need to take. Hopefully you have a good scan of the architectural drawing at a good resolution.

- Open the scanned file into PS

- rotate the image so that the horizontal and vertical lines of the drawing are exactly horizontal and vertical respectively in PS (this is actually optional yet makes your life easier)

- If you want your scale in inches, choose that scale in PS. In reality, your can choose inches, cm, or millimeters and relabel that in your head as you desired scale (e.g. I choose millimeters and think of those as feet in my architectural drawings. I will use millimeters as the scale in the rest of the example (to represent feet)

- Use the PS ruler, measure a known scaled width on the drawing in pixels. Note both the architectural width as well as the number of pixels for the width

- Get a calculator and divide the number of pixels by the architectural width e.g. 787 pixlels dvided by 10 feet is 78.7 pixels per foot

- Go to Image > Image resize and note the full width of your document in pixels.

- Take the document width in pixels and divide by the pixel per foot number you calculated above. This gives you the width of your document in feet

- In the Image resize panel, a) Uncheck the resample checkbox b) set the scale to millimeters c) Put in the calculated feet of the width of your document from above d) don't touch the pixels per inch box e) click OK

- After the above operation, when you take measurements with the millimeter scale in PS, it will give you the exact feet associated with your architectural drawing.

Note, some architectural drawings overtime make change size on paper and not evenly between horizontal and vertical. You may have to stretch the vertical dimentions in the above example to get an exact match for both directions.

This has worked for me and if you have issues just ask more questions.

Hope this works for you too

Attempting to do this would only be valid for "rough order of magnitude" dimensions and would depend on how parallel the photo of the drawing was to the plane of the sensor - otherwise there will be foreshortening introduced.

All in all I don't think this would be a good idea...

Assuming it's a photo or scan of an architect's drawing, I would use a cad program like Sketchup to scale the drawing but I'm pretty sure any cad program will be capable. Sketchup is overkill because it's 3D but will still work. There are probably much simpler options. The key is the cad program works in actual sizes.

The general Idea is:

• Import the jpeg into the cad program.
• Use the dimension tool in the cad program to put in a known dimension.
• Resize the image to the correct scale (more on this in a sec), the known dimension should track the resizing.
• Add all the other dimensions you want. There will probably be a small amount of error in the resizing (and some distortion in your photo) so you might want to adjust the dimensions to things like multiples of one inch (or 1/4 inch depending on the original drawing granularity and/or your needs). For metric, I think it's centimeter granularity.
• Print it out.

Resizing the image. Easiest if the drawing has a printed scale on it - resize so the scale is the correct size. Otherwise, take a known size (like the dimension of a room or whatever) and scale the image so it's the correct length. For example, if the width of a room is 18 ft, draw a dimension for that width on the imported image. Then use the scale feature to resize the jpeg (uniformly in x and y) until the dimension reads 18 ft. The dimension should track when you resize. Use the largest feature you can find to minimize errors.

Note, photos of drawings can easily be distorted by not taking the picture precisely centered and perpendicular. It's actually tricky to get a perfect photo of a drawing, especially hand held. Probably ok if it's fairly close, depending on what you need it for. A scan is much better.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you all and thanks for your replies.

It is not a scanned drawing, but one that I have done myself in PS. I have correctly scaled it. It seems from all your replies that there is not an easy way to dimension it. I know a CAD programme would do this, but I do not have one, (is there a free one?).

I hope this clarifies things.

jules

JulesJ said:

Sorry to take so long to get back to you all and thanks for your replies.

It is not a scanned drawing, but one that I have done myself in PS. I have correctly scaled it. It seems from all your replies that there is not an easy way to dimension it. I know a CAD programme would do this, but I do not have one, (is there a free one?).

I hope this clarifies things.

jules

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Jules, I do not use free CAD software, and this is courtesy link to software I can't recommend because I did not use it by myself.

In addition, the easiest CAD software I know is Vellum/Graphite by Ashlar, but it is not free.

What is your goal in applying dimensions to an illustration you created in Photoshop? Since you created the image, you ought to know what the dimensions are and you ought to be able to create dimension and witness lines on a layer along with the text of the dimensional values. If your goal is to move forward with an architect or builder, one rendering isn't going to be enough to go on. Photoshop isn't the tool you ought to be using if your intent is to provide an engineering package of drawings to a builder or architect.

grsnovi said:

What is your goal in applying dimensions to an illustration you created in Photoshop?

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To provide an architect who will be doing work to the buildings

grsnovi said:

Since you created the image, you ought to know what the dimensions

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I do, but the architect doesn't. I m providing paper drawings.

grsnovi said:

are and you ought to be able to create dimension and witness lines on a layer along with the text

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I can, but it is long winded and in no way automatic or simple in PS. But PS is the best I have.

grsnovi said:

of the dimensional values. If your goal is to move forward with an architect or builder, one rendering isn't going to be enough to go on.

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One rendering?

grsnovi said:

Photoshop isn't the tool you ought to be using if your intent is to provide an engineering package of drawings to a builder or architect.

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I know. See above.

However this is the second property that I have done this for, saving myself about £1000 by having the architect having to measure up and create drawings. I did this for a loft conversion on a flat when drawings were needed by the council for planning permission.

I started this thread to ask if there were any shortcuts. obviously there are not. I did not ask for advice on what I was doing was correct. Thanks anyway Grsnovi.

Jules - take a look at the FREE software listed in the above link. I would suspect that at least one of them would give you the ability to IMPORT your image and then use the FREE software's dimensioning capability.

Several years ago I used a freeware CAD software called Easycad, and it would do what you are asking for. Not sure if it is still available for free online, but might be worthwhile to do a Google search for it. The program is very basic, but should do simple dimensioning

s_grins said:

https://www.scan2cad.com/cad/14-top-free-cad-packages/

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Thanks for those s-grins. Very interesting.

grsnovi said:

Jules - take a look at the FREE software listed in the above link. I would suspect that at least one of them would give you the ability to IMPORT your image and then use the FREE software's dimensioning capability.

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PM'd

Allen Gerdes said:

Several years ago I used a freeware CAD software called Easycad, and it would do what you are asking for. Not sure if it is still available for free online, but might be worthwhile to do a Google search for it. The program is very basic, but should do simple dimensioning

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Thanks. Will look.

Use a proper CAD package. Any changes you may need to do will be a breeze. PS is not ideal no matter how you look at it. Use the proper tools for the job.

Look at these:



I use Home Designer Architectural by Chief Architect. I started with Home Designer Suite then upgraded to Architectural. They have cheaper products. Very easy to use. Detailing a plan view can't get any easier. Super easy.

Blaklynx01 said:

Use a proper CAD package. Any changes you may need to do will be a breeze. PS is not ideal no matter how you look at it. Use the proper tools for the job.

Look at these:

https://www.lifewire.com/top-free-cad-packages-485330

http://www.bleuscape.com.au/blog/list-10-free-3d-home-architecture-design-programs/

I use Home Designer Architectural by Chief Architect. I started with Home Designer Suite then upgraded to Architectural. They have cheaper products. Very easy to use. Detailing a plan view can't get any easier. Super easy.

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Thanks