Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Does anybody know a way to check the "degrees of freedom" of entities and vertices in 3d sketches?

[#2]

Other than moving the vertex around?  If you right-click the vertex and choose "3D Move/Rotate", you can use the triad to move it.

I don't know if there is a "Show degrees of freedom" option like there is for a 2D sketch...

[#3]

Yeah, that's what I already do.

but when my 3d sketches show some green lines (not all black), I know they are not completely constrained.

How can I find out how to completely constrain them?
Do you know a good link that explains the details of this?

Incidentally, none of the vertices move along any of the 3 axes, meaning they are all completely fixed.

So why would some of the lines show up green?

See attached sketch.

[#4]

I've noticed that sometimes 3D sketches will do that.  The entities are fully constrained, but the colors don't update to reflect this.  When I dragged the vertex in your first 3D sketch, it didn't move and the colors updated to show as fully constrained.  But, when I exited the sketch, they went back to unconstrained colors.

It's annoying, and frankly I think it's a bug.

-cwhetten

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.

[#5]

Thanks.

That's all I need to know.

I wonder why Adsk refuses to fix thse age-old defects in theri software??

[#6]

Nearly all of my 3D sketches are created and controlled by 2D sketches.

Can you attach a file that exhibits this behavior?

[#7]

JD,

Yes. Just scoll back up the page and you'll find one.

[#8]

oops, I missed that attachment.

I would use 2D sketches to create and control (might not even use 3D sketch at all for that).

[#9]

JD,

Every time I do a job, I consider whether or not to use a "proven" method that has problems, or trying to invent a new method to do things.

This time I wanted to try 3d sketches to see if they don't break when things change. That's the problem I consistently encounter when using projected entities between sketches.

How do you propose keeping projected entities btw sketches from breaking when dims and geometric shapes change?

[#10]

Now that I'm working these 3d sketches, it seems like this problem happens only with angled lines.

I realize there's no such thing as an angled line in 3d space. Probably has something to do with construction planes and orthographic basis of the 3d sketches?