Am I reading these blue lines correctly? I cannot make any lines turn black.

[Inspections_JCH]

When I scroll the mouse over this sketch, all lines turn black. When the mouse is not over the sketch profile, all lines are blue. Am I looking at this correctly?

And if this sketch is not fully constrained, what will it take to make it so?

[jeff_strater]

what I find easiest to do in these cases is to just drag the geometry - it usually shows you where the degrees of freedom are.  In this case, you have quite a few unconstrained lines, and disconnected lines, which need to be fixed.

[jeff_strater]

and here is one way to fix the outer boundaries.  There are many ways to get there.  I did not try to fix the slot, hopefully you can figure that out.

[Inspections_JCH]

And now that nothing is moving, only two of the lines are black. And how would I get the fully defined slot?

EDIT:

I found the solution to the slot question. And the other lines were solved with the addition of some strategically placed construction lines and dimension.

[jeff_strater]

it seems to move for me:

[jeff_strater]

here is how to fully constrained from that point: 

[Inspections_JCH]

This sketch required far more constraints than I expected. And the slot seems to require both points to be constrained.

[TheCADWhisperer · Accepted solution]

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@Inspections_JCH wrote:

This sketch required far more constraints than I expected. And the slot seems to require both points to be constrained.

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@Inspections_JCH 

Check back in a few minutes for a 165 second video on how I would have done the sketch.  Turn on your sound.

https://autode.sk/3lUAJsp

[g-andresen]

Hi,

this is 1 solution

günther

[etfrench]

In Text Commands type: Sketch.ShowUnderConstrained  This will highlight any under constrained geometry.  It's very useful when you can't find that last bit of under constrained geometry.

[Inspections_JCH]

From your screencast, I was able to see some of the issues with my technique. I then tried a few other ways to constrain the geometry and found some and failed on others.

Further testing revealed that there are constraints that are implied by certain geometry such as a center point rectangle that will constrain the sketch while not being visible. For a new learner, that is perplexing.

Regarding the slot, I was dimensioning the center line of the slot and its location. It seems that the slot requires that the dimensions be applied to the perimeter lines rather than the center construction line. Again, not what I expected.

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Inspections_JCH wrote:

It seems that the slot requires that the dimensions be applied to the perimeter lines rather than the center construction line. Again, not what I expected.

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No, you can dimension the center construction line length and position.

I could have done it that way instead of the perimeter.