UCS / WCS / sketch constraint / view cube / drawing view

[thomas]

Dear Advisors,

over a number of versions of Inventor, i have been struggling with some frustrations. My problem has taken hours of messing around with the settings, eventually messing it all up of course and having to restore to default settings to get a workable environment back.

What i dont understand is that although the viewcube can be reset on any orientation of the part, this appears to do nothing for all of the other functionallity of the program. When i sketch on the front plane, it turns it over to the back. If the settings are as default, im probably also looking at the wrong plane on its side. That wouldnt even be a problem if the sketch constraint tools would move along that way too, but they dont?!

when i changed my UCS to have the front view as xz-y and the top view to be xy+z it seems that the z is pointing towards the ceiling. But opening the template as a new part will show me the back on top, the top in front (I mean the left of cube) and the right seems in the right place but on its side.

Now i have finally gotten my templates set up in such a way that i can get a model upright with the sketch constraints in the right direction and my WCS pointing Z axis upwards!! whoohoo!.. but when i save and quit my new part and reopen it. the viewcube executes a home command that now displayes my part front-down and top-forward... grrrr. but i can live with that. All thumbnails are now displaying my parts as fallen over forward.

Now... while i am satisfied with the top-front-right orientation of my part now, i will try to put it on a idw. AArrgghhh!!! the base view asks me to define the first view. I select the front view from the list. However i am now seeing my part appear on the top view. And if that is not bad enough, the (what would be) front is orientated to the left! I check my model and there it says: top = top, front = front.. all good. but the idw file doesn't agree. what gives?

I have searched for solutions, spent hours messing around and testing.. but unfortunately no solution has come to my attention. I would really appreciate it if anyone could tell me how i can just get my model, my drawing, my sketch constraints, my UCS and my WCS to all get along and stay that way upon saving and reopening. (please do not suggest to set the new part options to start with a sketch on a particular plane because i need to choose whether to start on the top or front or side for every part)

To give one more theoretical example i would like to suggest to make a very simple car shaped solid part. I guess i would draw a sketch of the contour of the car (wheels on the bottom, hood on the front, etc). so i will start on the xz plane (to me that would indicat the right or left side of the viewcube) I check on which side the front is located. Now i do a simple extrude. save and quit. reopen the file. the car is now pointing nose down.(?!?) this is also how it is displayed in the thumbnail. now i put it on the drawing and even though the model says the roof is on the top side. the base view, orientated as "top view" will show me the car from the side, nose pointing towards the bottom of my drawing.

Im lost... there must be something wrong in my settings for the coördinate system. please help me.

Many thanks,

kind regards,

Thomas

[pcrawley]

There are probably a two things that'll sort out your orientation confusion:

1. In Inventor 2015, the model orientation (Top, Front etc) in the drawing environment is simply taken from the View Cube settings in the model environment.  It sounds like you have got your View Cube and Part template sorted, so hopefully no more drawing view confusion.
2. In Tools > Application Options > Display - at the bottom of the dialog box is "Look at behavior".  The default is "Minimum rotation".  This means that sometimes you can "Look At" a sketch, and it'll be rotated 90 degrees left or right.  Either way, your sketch Vertical and Horizontal will be transposed leading to confusion!  Select the "Align with Local Coordinate System" and next time you use "Look At", horizontal will be horizontal etc.

Hope that helps.

[JDMather]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Now... while i am satisfied with the top-front-right orientation of my part now, i will try to put it on a idw. AArrgghhh!!! the base view asks me to define the first view. I select the front view from the list. 

Thomas

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I never worry about any of this.  Just relative words.

I place views by visual geometry.  The words or coordinate system becomes irrelevant to me.

[thomas]

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your response.

I have added a screenshot of my settings. Would you mind having a look at it and tell me if i am wrong when i say that it does not seem to match reality?

What i did here is open a default new part.

When i select the right plane (according to the view cube anyway) and draw the side of my car as any normal person would think of the side of a car, i end up making the front of the car the bottom.. and my drawing will display it that way accordingly. since this is all wrong, and to my customers and coworkers it is confusing to see which way is up or down, this method is not gonna fly. the bright side is that my model is displayed correctly in the thumbnail now. almost correctly i should say, because the front was by default displayed pointing towards the bottom left in isometric view, it is now pointing towards the bottom right. but the top is upright at least.

It seems that the only way to make the front the actual front (relative to the side and top anyway) is to draw the car standing on its rear end. Remember that changing the view cube settings did not change the plane that is believed to be the front. Resetting the viewcube by using RMB on it and set the front doesn't either. This is pretty straight forward when drawing the car, but simply unacceptable as a workaround for every day use. My parts are often too complex to reset my mind's axis system to autodesk's incomprehensive way of flipping around planes

Now i ended up creating a model that is always displayed on its rear end, but at least now the drawing view window knows which way is up..

I still fail to understand how to get a template set up that will have me sketch on the XZ plane and allow that to be the side of my product. When i say side of my product, i need that to be relative to the top and front of my product. In the end i need my product to be displayed bottom side down. As all my machinery is now displayed with its front or rear end facing down, like the car standing on its rear end in the picture.

I would much appreciate it if anyone could tell me how.

Kind regards,

Thomas

[thomas]

Dear JD,

Thank you for your reply but unfortunately "not caring" about the problem is not so much a solution for me, sorry.

[pcrawley]

In "car plus settings" you need to rotate the view so you are looking at the front of the car (ignore the words on the cube) - then right-click the cube and set the view to "Front".  This updates the words on the cube to match your expectation.

In your default new part, you need to go and sort out the view cube orientation.  Try creating a new part and once the modelling environment appears, the first thing you do is press F6 (should spin the view to the default isometric).  Resolve this by spinning the view to the "correct" (in your opinion) isometric and right-clicking the cube to make that your default "Home" view.  Save this file back over your template part file.

With regard to thumbnails - these are created from the components default isometric view.  Open any file in Inventor and check out the settings in iProperties > Save.  I think the default is "Active Component Iso View on Save".

I'm going to agree with JD - the words on the cube are not worth losing sleep over.  Personally, I would prefer no words at all to avoid this kind of debate; They don't help, they are just viewing directions.  That said, getting your default orientations resolved might save you a click or two when placing a view in a drawing.

[thomas]

thanks again for your reply, i appreciate the help.

In my latest quest for a solution i have discovered a important detail. It seems that on a fresh install of inventor the default metric drawing templete does in fact listen to the viewcube orientation as you suggested earlier. However, my company's drawing templates do not. That is probably why i was confused while trying to get my drawing to display the right side of my product. I have noticed that on my custom template i see the marking " (XY) " behind the front view in the "place base view" window. While on the default template it does not display the XY mark.

In the attachment i have tried to make a self-explainatory picture of what is happening and the steps i am taking. This time i used a simple aircraft shape to clearly indicate wich side is which. Also, I displayed which direction of the model is required alligned with a particular axis of the file. In this picture you can see why i could not get the viewcube and drawing to be corresponding.

Please note, at the moment I have not yet been able to sort out the template to display my model according the the home isometric view (F6), as you advised. I will have a go at that today.

I believe the problem is most likely to be caused by my drawing template. I hope someone can tell me how to change the behaviour of the currently used templates. I think my troubles would be over if i could just get rid of the fixed "XY =  Front" setting in my template.

Many thanks,

Kind regards,

Thomas

[thomas]

Reading my own post now, and seeing the attachment again, i realise that the viewcube displays "right" on the left side of the model and vice versa. I had never noticed that it doesn't represent the model's point of view but the beholder's. also a bit odd to my opinion.

[Jon.Dean]

Correct Thomas,

You are looking at the View cube, you are not inside the View cube.

Jon.