Leader Problem in AutoCAD r14
Comments by: Odin Cary

A good number of architectural students have asked me during my class sessions why my Dimensioning Leaders tend to work the way they want theirs but for some reason they always get an angled tail at the end.

Today I encountered the same phenomena on a client's project and I decided to find out why this was occurring. It took somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour to back track and compare between the Standard settings, that worked fine, and my settings that had the problem.

The answer lies with the belief that the Parent Dimension in the Dimension Family has no control over the children once they have been created. Well, the culprit is the Vertical Justification setting on the Parent's Format Dialogue Box. This setting must be set to Centered in order to actually get "Nice Straight Leader Tails". I put this under Bugs because the Leader Child has its own Vertical Justification setting which should override the Parent. Having the choice is fine with me, but the adjustment should be more obvious.

Another way of changing this Dimension Variable is to TYPE DIMTAD on the command line and set it to 0 (zero). After setting this variable, call up the Dimension Styles dialogue box (DDIM) and save the current change to your dimension style. Exit the Dimension Styles dialogue box and try a new leader.

If any of these changes affect the Text Position on your other dimensions, you will have to control them via the Format button on each child.