A continuous transition for a system moving in a three-dimensional (3D) space to moving in a lower-dimensional space, 2D or 1D, can be made by means of an external squeezing potential. A squeeze along one direction gives rise to a 3D to 2D transition, whereas a simultaneous squeeze along two directions produces a 3D to 1D transition, without going through an intermediate 2D configuration. In the same way, for a system moving in a 2D space, a squeezing potential along one direction produces a 2D to 1D transition. In this work we investigate the equivalence between this kind of confinement procedure and calculations without an external field, but where the dimension $d$ is taken as a parameter that changes continuously from $d=3$ to $d=1$. The practical case of an external harmonic oscillator squeezing potential acting on a two-body system is investigated in details. For the three transitions considered, 3D~$\rightarrow$~2D, 2D~$\rightarrow$~1D, and 3D~$\rightarrow$~1D, a universal connection between the harmonic oscillator parameter and the dimension $d$ is found. This relation is well established for infinitely large 3D scattering lengths of the two-body potential for 3D~$\rightarrow$~2D and 3D~$\rightarrow$~1D transitions, and for infinitely large 2D scattering length for the 2D~$\rightarrow$~1D case. For finite scattering lengths size corrections must be applied. The traditional wave functions for external squeezing potentials are shown to be uniquely related with the wave functions for specific non-integer dimension parameters, $d$.