Rule of thumb on choice of Front plane?

[valbotany]

Anyone have general advice on how to decide which planes to make the Front, Top, etc of a part?  And of assemblies?  I would hate to do this arbitrarily if there might be a smarter or more systematic way, particularly when other people will need to work with my parts in their assemblies.

I guess my temptation is just to make Front always the view that has the largest profile and number of details, or something like that.  But then when I go into assembly, somehow it seems like this way of doing things results in parts that come in in inconvenient orientations.  Maybe that is unavoidable and maybe this is actually more a classic engineering drawing question than an Inventor one.  But Inventor asks you to sketch on a Front plane as soon as you start a part.  Anyway, would love to hear any advice.

[Cadmanto]

Honestly, it really doesn't matter.  You can look at it like a car.  You can also select each of the front, side, top, bottom on the cube and determine that way.  Any way you slice it, if you are making multiple parts for an assembly, make sure you are consistant in always selecting (for example) the front plane so when you do assembly the parts, what you have chosen as the front, always faces front.

Hope that makes sense.

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[wimann]

I don't worry as much about the "FRONT" view as I do the "TOP". That's usually the only one I ensure makes sense. In my opinion, when viewing the "TOP" of the view cube (with the letters upright), one ought to be looking straight down at an assembly such that (if this applies to your models) north is facing up.

Many of our models are drawn with respect to North so that we can use that information at a later time without having to look it up again. But as far as what is the front and what is the side, we don't sweat too much over that. I just determine what makes sense as the "FRONT" of an object to me, then go from there. But the TOP is always the TOP.

That's how I do it anyway.

[swalton]

I like to base my part/assembly orientation on how the component fits in the real world.  I work to be consistent that the y-axis is vertical, the x-axis defines right-to-left and the z-axis is front-to-back of the final assembly. 

I renamed the origin planes in my part and assembly templates to match the view cube.  That way if I click on the right face of the view cube, I am looking at the RIGHT origin plane (YZ in the stock template), if I click on the top face, I am looking at the TOP origin plane (XZ in the stock template) and so on.

It helps that I work primarily on rail cars which have lots of obvious symmetry.  In my case the assembly TOP origin plane matches the top-of-rail datum, the RIGHT origin plane matches the centerline of the tracks, and the FRONT plane is centered along the length of the car.  I model the components as required to be able to use the origin planes for constraints in the upper level assemblies.  This requires me to plan how I will build my upper level assemblies as I model my individual parts.

[valbotany]

The impression I get is that maybe a good way then is to decide on what the Top and Front of your assembly are, and then make each part according to how it will be oriented in the assembly.

Does that sound about right?

[swalton]

I like to work that way.

It helps me to be consistant.  If I come back to a model I haven't touched in 5 years, I know how I constructed the model and it is easier for me to change. 

[lesmfunk]

It doesn't really matter too much unless your part is going to be used by a vendor (or other department) for CNC/CAM programming. Years ago I had to change the way I modeled so that Mastercam could import the model in its proper coordinate system. It saved the programmer tons of time to do it the way he wanted and it didn't really matter to me.

By the way, Inventor doesn't always ask you to sketch on the Front plane if you select "no new sketch" in the Tools>Application Options>Part tab.

[Anonymous]

We do a lot of machining here on vertical machining centers. Our part template uses the XY plane as the top and parts are usually modeled as they will be machined.

[graemev]

In olden times (when we spread lead for a living) the front view was for describing the most significant shape of the part.  The "front" view of an automobile was of the car's side, for example.

Now that I wrangle electrons for a living, I generally use "front" howsoever it makes the most sense for the part's method of manufacture.  For assemblies, it's a bit more about "top" than "front", though anything having a natural front - an operator's station, for example - gets oriented that way.

As to which axis qualifies as Up, Right, or Forward...  well... that's another story for another day.