topic Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole in Inventor Forum

Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

checkcheck_master — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:19:17 GMT

Hi there,

See picture, on a drawing, is it possible to dimensioning the keyway depth(4.5 mm) without having the sketch with the arc?

Greetings!

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

johnsonshiue — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 22:50:45 GMT

Hi! I am sorry I am not sure I understand the request. Why is the sketch arc needed here?

Many thanks!

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

checkcheck_master — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 23:09:16 GMT

Hi John,

I can not get the 4.5 mm in a dimension unless I place a sketch with an arc in it to refer to.

Greetings!

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

Rethceif-Nick — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:26:21 GMT

The way you have the keyway dimensioned, there is no way to get around it without some reference geometry (sketch) of some type. Or you could manually change the dimension to the correct spec.

A more proper way to dimension the keyway is from the bottom of the bore to the top of the keyway. Then you could use a reference dim for the depth, just overide the dimension to display the correct value.

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

mcgyvr — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 19:32:43 GMT

@checkcheck_master wrote:

Hi there,

See picture, on a drawing, is it possible to dimensioning the keyway depth(4.5 mm) without having the sketch with the arc?

?

Greetings!

@checkcheck_master Yes there is... Start the dimension command.. Pick the ID/radius then the vertical line of the keyway THEN go back and hold your mouse over the tangent point you want and it should popup and allow you to now select that for your dimension point..

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

checkcheck_master — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:01:08 GMT

Thanks Brian, exactly where I was looking for!

However, if the yellow mark does not fall on the black tip, it is very hard to see on my monitors, see pic.

I'm concerned that Inventor has more of these hidden tricks that I'm missing.
Is this documented in the help? I can't just find it.

Greetings!

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

ENGi3 — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 22:51:20 GMT

How does one dimension a keyway in inventor. the dimension should look like this

but it keeps forcing me to the center of the circle like in the pictures in the comments above. I would like to be able to dimension to the furthest point from the keyway flat. I try to make my dimensions ones that can actually be measured with calipers directly.

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

blandb — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 02:11:41 GMT

Should just be able to select the line and move cursor to the bottom quadrant and click on the node that appears.

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

ENGi3 — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:23:59 GMT

If the flat were parallel to one of the principal planes that does work. However, the flat on my part is at a weird angle (37.9 degrees) and that does not work. I was hoping to just select the flat and the circle and have the option on the circle to have the leader go to nearest or furthest distance from the flat on the circle, or center of the circle.

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

blandb — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 01:14:50 GMT

@ENGi3

Is below what you are referring to? This is 2026 I don't remember if previous versions would pick up the tangent like this, but hover over what would be around the tangency of the circle and look for the tangency glyph...Please see attached. If that doesn't work, you could start a sketch on the drawing view, project the circle and flat, make a line parallel and tangent, then dimension that in the drawing.

Re: Drawing, dimensioning keyway depth in a hole

ENGi3 — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:42:25 GMT

Thanks, that worked perfectly. I was not cognizant of the constraint icons while dimensioning the part. Your input was very helpful.