Distances on a drawing are measured with respect to a measure context. After you click the first reference point of the measurement, Creo Elements/Direct Annotation automatically selects the measure context to be the owner of the clicked point. For example, clicking an element in view top1 will set the context to be top1, but clicking geometry belonging to the active sheet will set the active sheet as measure context.
The measure context makes a difference, for example, when measuring scaled views. Therefore, you may occasionally need to change the automatically-selected context to get a different result. You change the context after clicking the first reference point, but before clicking the second point. More specifically:
1. Click Annotation, Geometry, or Insert and then, in the Utilities group, click the arrow next to .
2. Click Between Points, Horizontal, or Vertical. The Measure dialog box opens with the relevant options active.
3. Click the first reference point for the desired measurement.
Creo Elements/Direct Annotation selects an appropriate measure context.
4. Change the measure context to one of the following:
◦ Click Act Sheet / Act Frame for a distance with respect to the active sheet or frame, that is, including any view scaling.
◦ Click View for an absolute distance (ignoring scaling), and specify the view in one of the following ways:
▪ Click the view in the viewport.
▪ Select the view from the Drawing Browser.
▪ Enter the view's name in the user input line between double quotes ("").
◦ Click Sketch for an absolute distance (ignoring scaling) of a Creo Elements/Direct Drafting drawing loaded as a sketch into Creo Elements/Direct Annotation. Specify the sketch as described for views above.
5. Click the second reference point to complete the measurement.
The difference between measuring distances in the different contexts is:
• In the Act Sheet / Act Frame context, the distance given is that as seen on the sheet or frame (that is, after any scaling).
• In the View context, the result is the absolute distance (that is, disregarding scaling) with respect to the specified view.
• In the Sketch context, the result is the absolute distance (that is, disregarding scaling) with respect to the specified sketch.
For an unscaled view or sketch, the measured distance is the same (absolute) in both contexts.
For example, an absolute distance of 5 in a view scaled by 2 is seen as 10 when the context is Act Sheet / Act Frame, and 5 when the context is View.
The measure context is only relevant for distance measurements: Between Pts, Horizontal, and Vertical.
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Horizontal, or 
Vertical. The Measure dialog box opens with the relevant options active.