Dual Units in MBDVidia 3D

MBDVidia is capable of visualizing Dual Units on a 3D model.

This allows units such as inches and millimeters to be displayed simultaneously, which is advantageous for companies operating with international customers and suppliers. The practice is particularly beneficial when manufacturing components intended for use across multiple countries that employ different measurement systems.

Enable Dual units

Dual units can be displayed for any dimension type and for geometric tolerances. To activate dual-unit display for an annotation:

1. Access the Entity Navigator for the annotation by simply select the annotation, right-click on it, and choose Entity Navigator from the context menu.

2. At the bottom of the Characteristic Nominal tab, you can find Dual Value section.

1. For Dimensional Tolerance - you can choose the second unit from the dropdown:

b. For Geometrical Tolerance - from the dropdown select Yes to show dual unit:

3. After clicking OK (or apply and then Close), the annotation that originally displayed the value in inches now also shows the millimeter value in square brackets.

   

The BoC item contains both values as well.

Enable dual units for multiple annotations

Adding dual units can also be accomplished for multiple annotations at the same time, following a similar process as for a single annotation, and the steps are:

1. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on each item in the BoC that you want to select. Make sure all items are of the same type, either Dimensional or Geometrical tolerance and right click on any of the selected items and select Entity Navigator.
   

2. Once you open the Entity Navigator, simply follow the same steps as outlined in the previous section (Enable dual units).

Options

You can configure various parameters to tailor the dual units to your preferences. Once you click the Apply button in the Entity Navigator and enable dual units, additional parameters for the Dual Unit display will appear in the Entity Navigator window.

The dual unit parameters for a geometric tolerance are represented as follows:

Units

In either case, you have the option to select from a diverse range of units for your Dual Unit display.

Placement

The dual units value for geometrical tolerance is, by default, placed after the original value and cannot be changed.

Dual unit values for dimensional tolerance can be positioned in four different locations around the annotation using these options:

Depending on the selected position, the dimensional tolerance in dual units would appear as follows:

FAQ