Where is measureit

Delete x Icon : Deletes the Line Group. Line Weight Group : Use a vertex group's values to modify the line weight. Influence : Adjust the influence of the Line Weight Group.

Higher values move the Lines closer to the screen. This is useful for adjusting Line Groups that don't appear to be drawing correctly Jagged Edges, etc. Making this value negative allows for the drawing of silhouettes. Higher values will move lines further backwards Extension : Adds a slight over-extension to each line segment in this Line Group.

Larger values make smaller dashes. Draw Dashed : Draws all lines in this Line Group as dashed lines, regardless of visibility. Useful to achieve more even dashes in still renders when some lines are nearly parallel to the view. Can cause dashes to appear to 'slide' along edges when used in animations. Annotations Color : Sets Annotation Color. Visibility Eye Icon : Toggles the Annotations visibility.

Delete x Icon : Deletes the Annotation. Remove Text Field : Removes the last text field from the selected Annotation. Annotation Settings Text Field : Sets the text for the annotation. Annotations can have multiple text fields, each new text field will display as a new line in the Annotation Text. Font : Lets you select a custom font for the Annotation from your system.

This field defines the source custom property. If only one text field is available, only the value will be displayed. Size : The Annotation font size. Resolution : The Annotation font resolution. Triangle : Adds an Arrow to the end of the Annotation Leader. Line Weight : Line Weight of the Annotation leader.

Offset : The XYZ offset from the object or vertex that the annotation is attached to. Rotation : The XYZ rotation of the annotation text. Animation frames will be saved to the Output path defined in the Render Panel. Useful for plan drawings. We will setup and use an orthographic camera to capture the layouts and dimensions.

We will be using Freestyle to render the outline. Freestyle is an internal render engine that draws hard lines on mesh objects using a line style. Freestyle requires the mesh to have a face and it will render only the outline of that mesh. First we can first make a double viewport so its easier see now to control the camera.

We can do that up here in the layout tab. Right click and choose duplicate. I can double click this and rename to double and press enter. To make a double viewport over here on the top right I can hover the cursor until I get a plus icon, then left click and drag to split the viewport. To make more room in each viewport press T and N to close up both the tool and sidebars.

Do this for both view ports. We want this camera pointing directly down and capturing the entire outline. First we can zero out the cameras rotation transforms. I can input zero for the X, Y and Z. Zoom in and take a look at the camera. This leaves it pointing directly downwards. The apex or tip of the camera is where everything is viewed from.

Right now the tip is at the same position as the outline so the camera will be impaired by the plane. When you work with cameras in Blender the active camera will be the one used by the render engine. Because this is the only camera in the scene it will automatically becomes the active camera. You can tell an active camera by the fill in the triangle over the top.

We can enter camera view in a number of ways. This button here will bring you into a camera view. This is the view from the camera now. The frame is an indicator of camera view. We can leave this viewport as the camera view as we continue to setup the camera position within this viewport on this side.

Getting to grips with the camera in Blender is fundamental if you plan on rendering images or animations. I can left click in the Z location and drag to move the camera on the Z axis. As I do the mesh becomes visible through the camera view. To finalize the camera position we first need to change the camera from a perspective to an orthographic.

We can do that over here in the camera properties. From the camera type drop down we can set the type to orthographic. We can now bring the plane into view by increasing the orthographic scale. I can move this camera up so enter 8 metres in the Z axis and move it right up.

Lets render the view from the camera. First we can come over to the render properties tab. The default render engine is the real-time engine Eevee as its the one selected from the drop down here.

To render the camera view we can come up to the render menu up top here. From here we can choose render image. A separate image editor opens and renders the image. Right now the image shows a dark representation of the plane and the surrounding environment. Lets come back to the render properties tab. We can scroll down to the bottom.

Put a check mark in here to enable Freestyle. I can also click the drop down. Here there are additional settings to change the line thickness mode and line thickness. I will leave the defaults as they are.

Lets come to the layer properties tab where there are more Freestyle settings available once freestyle is enabled. Here we have the freestyle line set and these settings are what the freestyle render will be based on. Below this are the Freestyle line style settings. Here you can modify the line style from the stoke to color thickness to texture. In thickness I can reduce the line thickness to 2. This will narrow the line rendered and this can be adjusted later you need to increase or decrease the line width.

Just be aware you have full control over how the Freestyle line render will display from these settings here. The next thing we need to do is make sure there is a material on the outline. Lets come to the material tab. Here we have a material I added earlier on this object called outline. Next we can come to the world tab. In the world tab we can click into the background color and increase this to fully white. This will brighten the scene and match the outline color.

The scene color has a major influence over objects during render. Lets now press F12 and give this a render. Give this a moment to render. The freestyle render is adding the black outline to the plane. This will be the result we expect using freestyle. Only the outline of the mesh will render using the default settings. You can specify edges to be included in the freestyle render if needed. The MeasureIt dimensions are rendered separately then must be combined in the compositor.

Lets look at that process now. Lets X this down and come over to the view tab. Expand the render tab. In the drop down we have two options, frame or animation. We want to render just the frame. Lets click render. That only takes a moment to render as MeasureIt only renders the dimensions with a transparent background. Lets switch into the compositing tab up top here. The first thing we need to do is put a check mark in use nodes. That way we can combine both the blender render and the MeasureIt render together.

This is the default node network. It contains a view layer. The view layer is what is being rendered from the scene camera. Then the composite node. This creates the final output. We need to add the MeasureIt render and combine here to be composited in the final render.

We can do that by first clicking in the editor type and switching this to be an image editor. Then over in the image drop down choose the MeasureIt render. Hatches Define Hatches to be used in Vector Exports. Hatch Patterns can be defined in the 0 to 1 range on the x,y plane.

Hatch Patterns will draw all edges of objects in the hatch collection as the custom pattern Pattern Weight : Line Weight for the pattern fill Pattern Size : Scale factor for the pattern fill Pattern Rotation : Rotates the pattern fill for this hatch. Pattern Opacity : Sets the opacity for the pattern fill for this hatch. Schedules Create Schedules that can exported to a. Dimension : Display the objects X, Y, or Z bounding box dimension in this column. It can be slow and give unexpected results.

This can be enabled for individual elements as well, please only enable this for the whole scene if absolutely necessary Use Text Autoplacement Automatically move dimension text to the outside of the dimension line if it is too large to fit within. To add dimensions, annotations or line groups use the main tool panel. Dimensions Color : Sets Dimension Color. Visibility Eye Icon : Toggles the Dimension's visibility. Delete x Icon : Deletes the Dimension.

Dimension Settings Font : Lets you select a custom font for the Dimension. View Plane : The preferred view plane for the Dimension. None : Dimension's placement will be based on the angles of the adjacent surfaces.

If no Camera is selected the Dimension will be visible in all Cameras. Offset : The offset distance from the ends of the Dimension line to the Vertex or Object it's attached to. Rotation : Rotates the Dimension around the axis of its measurement. Font Size : The Dimension font size. Resolution : The Dimension font resolution. Arrow Size : The size of the Dimension's terminations.

Arrow Angle : The angle of Dimension's triangle and arrow terminations. Delete x Icon : Deletes the Line Group. Line Weight Group : Use a vertex group's values to modify the line weight. Influence : Adjust the influence of the Line Weight Group. Higher values move the Lines closer to the screen. This is useful for adjusting Line Groups that don't appear to be drawing correctly Jagged Edges, etc. Making this value negative allows for the drawing of silhouettes.

Higher values will move lines further backwards Extension : Adds a slight over-extension to each line segment in this Line Group. Larger values make smaller dashes. Draw Dashed : Draws all lines in this Line Group as dashed lines, regardless of visibility. Useful to achieve more even dashes in still renders when some lines are nearly parallel to the view.

Can cause dashes to appear to 'slide' along edges when used in animations. Annotations Color : Sets Annotation Color. Visibility Eye Icon : Toggles the Annotations visibility. Delete x Icon : Deletes the Annotation. Remove Text Field : Removes the last text field from the selected Annotation. Annotation Settings Text Field : Sets the text for the annotation. Annotations can have multiple text fields, each new text field will display as a new line in the Annotation Text.