Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

This is probably a simple one, but when I dimension from an edge to the tangent of a radius or circle

it always snaps to the center.  How do I get the dimension to snap to the tangent point?

Thanks

Scott

[#2 · Accepted solution]

About a minute in...

http://vimeo.com/11672625

Essentially you have to wait until the glyph changes to show tangent.

[#3]

Thanks Mark, but the firewall here prevents me from seeing the video.

What is "glyph" ?

Can you explain this in words?

[#4]

Great thing about Vimeo...

In the right area of the screen I have allowed download of the video, but in case you still can't get it...

See attached image.  It will appear as you move around the arc or curvature.

[#5]

Sketch or drawing?

In a sketch you can just throw in a construction line.

In a drawing sometimes I've found that it just does not want to work. It'll look like it's going to do it and then when you click ... boom, it goes right to the center. Let it, then when you exit the dimension function you can grab the extension and drag it over to where it needs to be and it should stick.

Playing around with it just now it seems to work great for circles, but on arcs it only wants a quadrant point or maybe an end point.

You can always go the sketch route, select the view and then "Create Sketch", project what you need to construct a line then exit the sketch an put in the dimension. Then you can go back into the sketch and make your line only visible in the sketch.

[#6]

Thanks Mark.

I was able to open up the video at home.  I got it to work.

Wish you didn't have to zoom in so tight.  You would think that

the select other would toggle to this.

[#7]

Hi Dan,

This was in the sketch.  I got it to work following Marks video.

Thanks for your help.

[#8]

On the other hand Dan answered my question. At least I hope I can get it to work that way.

Thank you

Jim

[#9]

Jim,

Glad this helped you as well.  I ahve not tried this in the drawing yet, but I did find it

rather difficult in the sketch though.  Should not be this hard.  I like the SW way where

you can either RC on the dimension and change the location, or just drag the end point

to the desired location.

[#10]

For beginners reading this thread - just a note: machinist hate this type of dimension as it is very difficult to hold tolerances in the manufacturing environment (read - increase cost).  Use only if a critical dimension - otherwise dimension to centerpoint locations of arcs.