topic Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 00:57:15 GMT

I've never seen this issue before. I do a Sketch->Text, and I click to position and when I type a letter or number, it's upside down?

What odd thing did I do to get into that mode?

Thanks

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

kshea9RNL8 — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 01:09:52 GMT

I'm betting the view cube Top view got outa whack, orient current view so you don't have to stand on your head and then right click View Cube and "Set current view to" Top

OR...........

The "Angle" in the text input box got set to 180º

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 01:15:41 GMT

Hi --

Thanks! The clicking of the cube and setting the current view top did the trick!

(I wonder how I changed something to get it out of whack)

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

kshea9RNL8 — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 01:25:27 GMT

The thinG to learn is when ever something like that happens remember that it's not our fault and it must be a Fusion 360 bug

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 03:06:41 GMT

Hi --

Well, I spoke too soon. After I set the view on the cube, it worked, but the next time I created a text sketch, it happened again. This is on the same model in the same session.

I could set the view on the cube again and it would work, but I have to do that every time.

So, I gave up for now and just set the angle of the text to 180 deg. so that the text will be rotated upward.

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

kshea9RNL8 — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 03:12:05 GMT

Have you tried shutting down the PC, re-booting and re-started Fusion? I've seen that fix issues.

You might also try clearing user cache data.

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 05:53:31 GMT

Okay --

I think I may have a better clue as to what causes this.

I didn't reboot my PC because that sounded a bit extreme.

I did restart fusion and started a new design to see what happens.

I learned that if I just sketch text on one of the planes, there is no problem. The issue happens when I choose my sketch plane as one of the faces on a body -- that's when the text is upside down.

I use a body face as the sketching plane because I extrude the text afterwards and do a join, so my text gets stuck onto the body.

The funny thing is, I've done it this way before on a couple of other designs, and it worked fine, so I could swear that this is a new thing that popped up. Or, perhaps maybe the other bodies I drew the sketch on were oriented differently. In this recent case, I put the text onto the Top face of a body.

One more thing -- I'm on Windows 10. I don't know if that matters -- probably not, but I used to use Windows 7 before this recent design.

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

PhilProcarioJr — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 11:32:43 GMT

@itchytoes

This is a known issue, not sure where they are at with fixing it though.....one way to keep this from happening is to select the face you want to use and do an offset plane with zero offset. then use that plane and your text will be correct.

@jeff_strater any idea when this might get fixed?

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

jeff_strater — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 00:21:54 GMT

@itchytoes, @PhilProcarioJr,

This one is a bit more involved than it first seems. At the risk of inciting violence, this is not really wrong, in a purely technical sense. Whether text is "upside down" or "backwards" is all dependent on the view. For instance, if I put text on a sketch on each of the origin planes, it looks like this:

You could argue that the one on the XZ plane is wrong. But, it's right in terms of the coordinate system of that plane. The X and Y axes of a sketch on that plane are:

So, in this view, the text is actually correct. But, you might ask, why, when I start from the standard home iso view, and edit this sketch, do I get:

This is a good question. The answer is that "look at" for a sketch (or any object, for that matter), does a "minimum rotation" to get to the view. It doesn't always guarantee that you view the sketch along its sketch normal, and with X in the positive direction to the right, and Y in the positive direction upward. We could do that, but the view transition would be jarring in a lot of cases. And, in 90% of the sketches which do not have text, it doesn't matter. There is no backwards or upside-down for a rectangle

You can see this minimum rotate in action if you start from different views:

So, long story short: Yes, we could change the behavior so that "look at" for a sketch always orients the sketch so that text is right-side up and forwards. And, that might be correct. The other thing, which we are planning (although I'm not sure exactly when) is to offer commands to flip text (you can already rotate). Do you think that will help?

Jeff

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 00:36:24 GMT

Thanks @jeff_strater for the explanation. I don't know that I understand the explanation completely, but oddly enough, I sort of vaguely figured in the back of my mind that what you explained might be what's going on. I worked around it by just doing the 180 degree rotation, which is simple enough, and I've accepted this quasi-issue as a "quirk in the software" 🙂

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

itchytoes — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 01:38:02 GMT

Hi -

I forgot to mention one more thing. I remember that in an earlier design, my text was right side up. The difference is in which surface I chose to sketch the text.

If I choose to create the sketch on the Front surface of the body, the text will be right side up. If I choose the Top surface of the body to put the text, the text is upside down. I didn't try the other surfaces, but I guess it's easier to figure out which end is up in some cases as compared to others.

Betty

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

PhilProcarioJr — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:29:56 GMT

@jeff_strater

I see what your saying but explain this to me. In the screen cap below I started a sketch on the front plane and I have orient to sketch turned off so my view doesn't change. Now if you look at the view cube you will see the word FRONT, now look at the default orientation of text and it is upside down and backwards in relation to the view cube. Do you really feel this is the least confusing way to display the default orientation of text? That's like saying it doesn't matter if the word FRONT on the view cube is upside down. It's very confusing to new users and to be honest it confuses me because it makes no sense. I agree there should be a box to flip a sketch and text in both directions, but I also feel the default orientation should be fixed. Currently the text isn't even correct when viewed from the back view, it's still upside down. Now even aside from all of this if I create an offset plane with zero offset the orientation of the text is as expected. So by your teams own definition of wanting everything across Fusion to work the same, one or the other is broken. And you guys wonder why new users get frustrated..........

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

PhilProcarioJr — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:48:05 GMT

@jeff_strater

Another reason this seems wrong to me.... Say I am doing work ok my client wants text model with a 2D print. Ok great so my drawings defaults to a front view so I pick the front plane to draw a sketch on type out my text and extrude it ok great. I save the file and create a drawing and select the front view, Houston we have a problem, in the print my text is backwards and upside down...can I fix this by choosing the back view? Nope...so now I either have to do a work around every time I do text or give my customer something that makes me look like I have no idea what I'm doing. Now if I sketch on the front plane it works the opposite of how the text works and shows up in the front view as expected. So what's right?

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

PhilProcarioJr — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:50:09 GMT

@jeff_strater

Now if I sketch on the front plane it works the opposite of how the text works and shows up in the front view as expected. So what's right?

It used to work as expected but one of the updates broke it......

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

jeff_strater — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 23:37:38 GMT

@PhilProcarioJr: All good points, I agree. I was just trying to explain how this all works as it is today, not to try to imply that it is not confusing.

The XZ plane has always been a problem child, because of its odd axis orientations. The reason for the "upside down and backwards" part is because it was considered important that the sketch normal of a sketch on the XZ plane point in the +Y direction, so that a positive Extrude would go in the direction of the Y axis:

It helps to look at the coordinate system for a sketch on each origin plane. I've modeled a coordinate system using solid bodies, which makes it easy to rotate into various orientations. Here is the global CS (which is also the CS for a sketch on the XY plane):

In all these images, red is X, green is Y, and blue is Z (RGB...). This one is easy to understand.

Now, let's look at the YZ plane:

Remember, we are looking at the local sketch coordinate system. So X and Y are now rotated into the YZ plane, and Z is oriented toward the "inside" of the model. But, this is all kosher as far as text goes, which we have seen.

Now, the problem child: XZ. In order to get the default normal for the sketch to point along the global Y axis (toward the inside of the model), and to maintain a right-handed coordinate system, the local coordinate system of the XZ plane has to be oriented like this:

Which you can see if you rotate the axis model bodies.

So, it all comes from wanting that normal direction to be in a certain orientation. We could certainly change the normal direction for the XZ plane. Or make it an option. But, this is the way it is today.

I'm pretty sure nothing has changed in this area for a very long time, though. The "zero offset plane" approach never should have changed this, I believe, because an offset workplane inherits its coordinate system from what it was offset. So a zero offset plane from the XZ plane should produce the same results as the XZ plane itself. This seems to be the case, as far as I can tell.

I'm confused by the comments about drawings. Drawing views appear to be doing exactly the right thing: The view you get is exactly the same as the view when looking at the front view. Yes, the text is upside down and backward, but the drawing agrees with the model, doesn't it?

Thanks for the patience to have read all the way through this. I've also attached this model to this post, in case you want to take a look.

Jeff

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

jeff_strater — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:07:15 GMT

Actually, I just realized this morning that my XZ plane image was not quite correct - I was missing one more rotation. This is actually what it looks like:

And this agrees with text in that plane, as well:

Another thing to consider: If you switch to "Y up" as the default orientation, it works more as you expect:

Jeff

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

PhilProcarioJr — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:40:24 GMT

@jeff_strater

Y up wont work for me. All my machines assume Z up so if I use Y up I have to rotate all my models. Either way it is what it is, I will continue try to unconfuse new users and use work arounds.

Thanks for the explanations but I already understand why it is the way it is. My concern is no other 3d app has default behavior like this so it's a pain and confusing for new users.

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

Raluca-CoffeBased — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 11:09:34 GMT

I still think it's a bit crazy how if one inserts and DXF/DWG then one has to perform TWO operations to get it where one needs it to be.. I now flip/mirror then rotate CCW the logo in Illustrator THEN save as DWG, then insert into my Fusion file.. would be nice it it just worked without workarounds..

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

david_a_sinn — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 20:35:21 GMT

I'm fighting this 7 years later trying to import frame sections from a ship hull that I drew in AutoCAD. It seems to me the problem is 100% because of an assumption made on the part of the devs. And that assumption is wrong from a user standpoint, if I'm working on the front plane, I want positive extrusions to be "up" toward the camera view. This is how I've done it for more than 20 years in AutoCAD. This should be a user selectable option.

Re: Why is my sketch text appearing upside down?

hmmiller — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 16:21:50 GMT

Has there been any solve for this?

I have my students set up their drawings as they are looking down on top of the table for Mill or Plasma Cutting. While its not difficult to rotate and mirror the images, it is in improper workflow to have to do this.