You can create measurements for PCB Layout designs, 3D models, and 2D drawings. With a design or a model open, select a measurement type.

The Measure dialog box opens and you can select the entities to measure. The same dialog box is used for all measurement types. The Measure dialog box contains a toolbar that displays the measuring tools, a Setup panel that includes the Reference collector and tool-specific settings. Measurement results are displayed in the graphics area and in the Results panel. The Results panel displays referenced entities, type of measurement, value, and the unit of measurement for all selected entities. When you modify the references, the result is automatically updated in both locations.

The entities you select to measure appear in the Reference panel of the dialog box. Measurements are calculated when you select enough references. For instance, one reference is enough to calculate an area measurement but two references are needed for an angle measurement. If a measurement takes an extended amount of time to complete, the Title bar displays a progress bar for the duration of the calculation. When you save the measurements in an annotation set, you save the measurements and their references to the parts measured. You can calculate a measurement, save it to the annotation set, and then switch to another measurement type without closing the dialog box.

If you select two or more references of measurements that can be aggregated, for instance, length, the sum of the measurements appears in the graphics area. Each measurement and the sum of the measurements appear in the Results panel.

You can copy measurement results together with the measurement column headers from the Results pane to the clipboard.