Problem closing a profile

[jlwalsh27]

I'm having trouble with the Direct Manipulation tutorial in Inventor Pro 2011. In the "Draw the Sketch Geometry" section, step 9, it says to right-click and select Close, but Close is greyed out. I've tried doing a similar sketch using some very simple geometry (a couple of joined cubes) and it seems I only have this problem with projected geometry lines. I've attached my .ipt file.

Thanks

[sxh2000251]

just my two cents:

i guess Below is the behavior of "close".

click line command -> sketch a line (this line is remebered as the first line of this line command)-> close is not avaliable now because there is only one line in this line command session -> donot cancel line command, draw other line(s)  -> close is avaliable now -> click close -> a new line segment is drawn back to the starting point of the first line

and there are two key points in this workflow:

1. it can only draw back to the starting point of the first line

2. it is avaliable only in one line command session.

so you can not use "close" to close a projected line. i guess you can add conincident constraint to make a close profile.

[jlwalsh27]

Thanks for the reply, sxh.  The tutorial has you use the projected geometry to place new lines that you put in with the Line command, so I'm not trying to close a profile that includes projected geometry. At least I don't think I am....

I've gone through the tutorial many times, being very careful to make all the relevant lines in one Line command. I've tried making a simple triangle this way. If I draw the first two lines using random points on the work plane, Close is available and works. If I use the endpoints of some (but not all)  projected geometry lines to place the first two lines, Close is greyed out. It's really baffling to me.

I've double-checked that both Constraint Inference and Persistance are turned on, and it looks to me like the endpoints of all the lines I draw are coincident. What am I missing?

[bobvdd · Accepted solution]

This is a known issue which I discussed recently with our Techpubs folks.

The best that I can explain what is going on is by using a very simple case of two lines (a red and a blue one)  that  partially overlap each other. If you draw the blue line first and then draw the red line, while you are drawing the red line , the "Close" command is grayed out in the context menu. Somehow Inventor gets confused and does not know which solution to pick.

In the tutorial we ask you to draw lines over existing projected lines. This results in the same effect as I explained above: overlapping lines and the "Close" command being disabled.

Until we sort this out, I would suggest to just sketch the missing line(s) with the Line command to close the sketch and to be able to proceed with the tutorial.

Cheers

Bob

[jlwalsh27]

Thanks Bob!

[bobvdd]

Forgot to mention that we logged a defect for this with number 1408043.

Thanks.
bob