How to show a customer their measurements

[brianwilliammartin]

Hello all,

I am creating a template for proofs that I will be sending out to customers for work.  We are creating labels and decals.  We need to be able to show our customers exactly how large their decals will be using lines, arrows & numbers.  At my last job we used a program called Flexisign.  In this program there was a function that if you highlighted a box, circle, shape etc. and clicked this "measurement tool" the measurements would automatically pop up on the x and y axis of the object for a perfect display.  My question is:  Does Illustrator have this function or something else like it.  Otherwise we will need to draw in our lines, arrows and text.

Something like this: (these were drawn in illustrator but look just like what Flexi was able to create automatically).

[Mylenium]

AI doesn't have such features, but you can buy plug-ins. The latest version of VectorScribe can render its measurements persistently and CAD-Tools has a full selection of measuring and labeling tools:

VectorScribe v3 - Astute Graphics

Hot Door - CADtools - Overview

Mylenium

[d0nut247]

specctr is pretty good for much less money than hot door tools which i found are a pain, expensive and a bit useless, also they stopped working after way too few Ai upgrades for the cost of the plug in!

also there are some free scripts that do a pretty good job of it, like one by adamdehaven

[hotdoorsupport]

Hot Door, Inc. releases a new version of CADtools every 18-24 months.  Each new release includes new tools and features, as well as compatibility with a new Adobe release.  Full versions cost $379.00, but once you purchase a full version, you can upgrade to the new release for $229.00 as long as you have a serial number from one of the three previous versions of CADtools.  If you are in the upgrade path, and Hot Door releases in 18 months, it will cost you $12.74 per month to use CADtools.  If Hot Door releases in 24 months, the cost will be $9.54 per month.  Also, CADtools is backwards compatible, and will continue to work on the versions of Illustrator that version of CADtools was programmed for.  For example, CADtools 11 is compatible with Adobe Illustrator CC 2018, CC 2017, CC 2015.3, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC and CS6.  If you consider the amount of time it takes to create dimensions manually, I guess whether or not CADtools is worth the cost would depend upon the amount of time it would save.  Please contact support@hotdoor.com if you have any other questions or concerns.

[d0nut247]

That’s a lot of chat to try and justify the cost!

Maybe just don’t charge so much in the first place?

You can remove me from your mailing list I won’t be buying hotdoor cadtools again thanks.

[hotdoorsupport]

It's more than an lot of chat. Instead, it's a thorough explanation of why CADtools is a perfect solution for many people

for their Illustrator dimensioning needs, but certainly not everyone.  It's difficult to remove you from the mailing

list as I have no idea who "dandid" is, but if you contact me at support@hotdoor.com, I will be glad to do that.

[d0nut247]

Hey sorry Hotdoor, i saw / replied to this in my email, thinking it was a newsletter,and that i was probably replying to a bot anyway...

In the Forum context your message of course makes sense, and I appreciate that whilst your tools were not right for me, they could well be perfect for others. I didn't have a great experience using them and clearly i'm not making enough money from the jobs i needed it for to justify the cost. I'd delete my post but the forum isn't having any of it today.