How can I measure the overall height of an irregular surface?
Imagine that you have a model that has spline-based surfaces, rather than planar or analytic faces, at the height, length, or width extremities. Or perhaps the highest point on your model is a face resulting from a fillet, rather than an extrude, revolve, etc. How can you measure the overall height?
The Measure tool will allow you to measure to an irregular surface, but it will only tell you the minimum distance to the surface, not the maximum. So, create an offset reference plane that lies well beyond the maximum height of the irregular surface. Make the distance between the bottom of your part and this new plane an easy, round number (let's call this X). Then, use Tools - Measure to measure the minimum distance from the irregular surface to this new reference plane (let's call that distance Y). The overall height of the model = X-Y.
Use this trick twice if the part is irregular at both ends.
