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Add CTRL behavior to Horizontal and Vertical sketch constraint.

Add CTRL behavior to Horizontal and Vertical sketch constraint.

If you choose a horizontal constraint and you realize that you need a vertical constraint, then you need to select the vertical constraint.
Despite the fact that we are now in 2015 get a preview to see what is horizontal or vertical.
Add a CTRL action, so that horizontal changes to vertical as soon as you press the CTRL.
Ditto for vertical to horizontal constraint.

85 Comments
jmlip
Advocate

When placing ordinate dimensions, it would be nice to switch between horizontal and vertical dimensions without having to restart the command, and select your view each time.

Tags (1)
Ben-Cornelius
Collaborator

I would like to see horizontal and vertical markers in sketch mode for the use of horizontal and vertical sketch constraints as this is not always obvious and epecially not to new users. 

 

13.JPG

MattH_Work
Collaborator

Axes.jpg

 

 

Inv Axes.jpg

 

Already available (thick line is horizontal)

cwhetten
Advisor

I agree with Matt.  True, the fact that the thicker line is horizontal is not immediately obvious, but there is also this:

 

Sketch Coord Indicator.PNG

 

It is much more obvious that X is horizontal (not the part X-direction, that has nothing to do with the sketch X-direction).

 

Cameron Whetten
Inventor 2014

kevinb
Advocate

Mounting the H underneath the Cube would look snazzy.

DWhiteley
Advisor

In 2015, when using the new horizontal/vertical constraint in sketching, you see preview of the direction.

Idea is to use a button or the mouse wheel to toggle between horizontal & vertical constraint as the preview is shownig, if the wrong one has been selected.

This will stop the mouse clicks to go to the other constraint.

Rory_M
Advocate

This is a great idea.

How about using the CTRL key, just like other commands such as trim where holding down CTRL makes it extend and vice versa.

GNR88
Enthusiast

This is a great idea and applies more to 2015 than previous versions as you don't know which you need as the sketch no longer rotate to suit.

a_sima
Enthusiast

Please make Horizontal/vertical REAL!, I'm not interrested Horizontal constraint to be aligned to, say, X axis, sometimes a horizontally constrained line becomes vertical!. If I set the sketch in specific orientation, when I set a line as horizontal that means I want that line to be parallel to the base of the screen that is HORIZONTAL, it's strange to have these constraints as they are now.

 

Can we have just F8 to show/hide the constraint displaying? Why two different keys?

Tags (2)
graemev
Collaborator

I'm totally onboard with using F8 as a toggle instead of an F8/F9 combination.

 

As for horizontal being "real" only in the context of the user's view of the model?  Anyone using a 3D mouse will HATE this idea.  Any slight misalignment of the view of the sketch plane (some of us do not usually view the sketch plane orthogonally anyway) will result in a skew line defined as horizontal.  No.  No.  No.  "Real" in terms of horizontal and vertical should always be in reference to the current sketch plane.  The horizontal axis is bolder/thicker than the vertical, likely designed expressly so for reasons of visual orientation.

MDLtd
Contributor

Prior to seeing this post I raised this very subject in the Inventor Beta forums.

 

This is a cut & paste of my post:

 

Quote from Paul Munford’s review of Inventor 2015 in Develp 3D magazine:

"For those of us that use Inventor every day, it’s the little improvements that we really appreciate (horizontal and vertical constraint indicators alone will save hours of frustrating picking)."

How true that statement is!

Whilst I applaude whoever made that change (which will affect everyone of us) I can’t help thinking that it is one stage short of being perfect - why not merge the two commands into one and simply "Tab" between the two whilst in sketch mode. In that way we can totally avoid picking the wrong constraint and having to return to the menu to make a further pick?

 

Either CTL or TAB is fine with me, as long as we get a toggle option. I have added my Kudos to the list.

 

Regards all,

 

Dave

jhackney
Contributor

You can edit you Inventor keyboard commands and make the Horizontial constraint one key and Vertical another.  Then if you select the wrong one simple press the other key.  This would be the same motion as touching the Ctrl or Tab key.  You may have to arrange a few keys to get what is comfortable to you.  With the on screen glyphs, you can quickly tell which one you are applying with a quck glance.

scottmoyse
Mentor

I vote for TAB.. since it's that kind of behaviour. Yes keyboard shortcuts can be setup very easily but this would be more user friendly. In fact the TAB toggle could do with being implemented in a lot of places through out Inventor.

sales
Contributor

 

An improvement that I'd like to see refers again to alignment of sketch views.

 

It's Inventors desire to align to WCS / UCS versus my requirement to view the sketch in the alignment which suits my way of thinking best.

 

This problem refers to the Horizontal and Vertical Constraints, - these may be either set horizontal / vertical or parallel / perpendicular; - however the result of using the Horizontal and Vertical constraints is always the same:

 

Inventor has it's own (very correct) opinion of what is horizontal and vertical (it correctly aligns to the UCS) but this is not what I want.

 

Most of the time I'm not concerned about the UCS alignment, I just want to view the sketch in the orientation in which I want, and I want horizontal and vertical constraints to be RELATIVE TO THE SCREEN DISPLAY so that I don't need to work out which is horizontal and vertical relaive to the UCS

 

[I don't usually re-align the UCS]

 

Or am I missing something ?

mrattray
Advisor

So, what happens if you constrain a line to horizontal and then you rotate your view 90 degrees? Does the line rotate or does the line become vertical? Now, what if you rotate your view 45 degrees?

Geoemetery should never be dependant on your view orientation.

sales
Contributor
The terms horizontal and vertical are ambiguous as they no longer apply
when the view is rotated - just imagine the problems if they changed when
the view rotated !!

Once the constraint is applied, ie. if an angled line is constrained
horizontally, rotating the view has no effect.

All I'm saying is that it's easier if Inventor can understand that a line
so selected to be horizontal on my screen is in made horizontal (not
implicitly horizontal) on my screen rather than me having to say choose
between it being a vertical constraint or a horizontal constraint to get
the line horizontal - this is the situation as it is now.

Just try it, - use the horizontal and vertical constraints on unconstrained
non-orthogonal lines and see the problem when applying the constraints to
unconstrained lines in different view rotations.

Re:

So, what happens if you constrain a line to horizontal and then you rotate
your view 90 degrees? Does the line rotate or does the line become
vertical? Now, what if you rotate your view 45 degrees?

Geometry should never be dependent on your view orientation.
Cadmanto
Mentor

CONTRAINT.JPG

I can't tell you how many times I have fallen victim to this issue. You are square to the view (as indicated by the cube) and one would think that if you wanted the peak points in line you would hit the horizontal contraint.  No, because this view is not normal for the default sketch, meaning the sketch rotates (see my other idea about non rotating sketches 180°) this view does not become the norm.  Thus, because of this factor, the vertical contraint is needed as apposed to the horizontal.  I found this out, because when I selected the horizontal, it made my sketch really funky.  Not sure what the solution would look like for this, but something needs to be done to make the difference between the two more clairvoyant.

Tags (1)
neil.hamilton
Enthusiast

This has happened to me so much I have given up using horizontal and vertical constraints for the most part as they are so disfunctional. This should be fixed, it works in OtherCAD so this is so basic it should work here also.

LT.Rusty
Advisor

No, it shouldn't ever be dependent on the view orientation ... but that's not exactly what I took away from the OP here.  What I got from it was that horizontal and vertical should be tied in with the view cube.  If you're on the XY plane, then horizontal and vertical constraints match the view cube's lettering.  We read (in English anyway) from left to right, and that's horizontal.  The up-and-down direction of the letters on the cube matches the vertical direction.  Same if we're looking at XY from the back, or if we're looking at XZ from the top or the bottom.  When we look at YZ, though, horizontal and vertical don't match the orientation of the lettering on the view cube.  Horizontal takes us along the Y axis, and vertical along the Z.

 

I would like to see vertical be parallel - always parallel - to the Y axis, and horizontal be always coplanar to XZ, no matter what.  (Unless you are sketching on the XZ plane or a plane parallel to XZ - in that case vertical should be parallel to the Z axis, and horizontal should always be coplanar with XY.)

LT.Rusty
Advisor

Neil,. while I agree with you that they are a little counterintuitive and I'd like to see them get a bit more rational, there IS a not-obvious way to tell what's going to happen when you use one or the other.  In the screenshot above, notice how the major axes are turned on in the sketch?  Notice how one of them is thicker than the other one?  The thick one is always the horizontal direction, and the thin one is always the vertical direction.  It's not an obvious cue at first - I only discovered it a few months back after JD Mather beat me over the head with it when I was complaining about the same problem.  🙂

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