Modifying joints

[Noah_Katz]

This may be common knowledge among experienced users, but I haven't read it anywhere (and I've read a *lot*), so here it is.

I've found modifying joints to be a great way to tweak locations (though not too far) and orientations of components when building an assembly model.

You need to right-click/edit to change type or flip, but it doesn't work well at all for adjusting position and orientation because components may scatter all over the scene from their actual current positions, and you can't see what happened until you exit the form.

MUCH better is to use Modify/Change parameters.

You can change the entries for the joint (many you won't have actually entered, they will have defaulted to 0), hit enter, and they update on the screen right then without having to exit the form, so you can play with the entries until you get what you want.

Took me awhile to realize that that X/Y/Z for joints are per the joint symbol coordinate system, not origins in the scene.

[innovatenate]

I think this discussion is a good one on this topic. There is a a lot of insight provided through this conversation. I'm not sure if you came across this post or not, but wanted to share.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/design-validate-document/let-s-talk-about-joints/td-p/5493427

I hope it helps.

Thanks,

[Noah_Katz]

Thanks, Nathan; yes, I had seen that post but it was early on and I had forgotten a lot of it.

Something I totally don't remember but is especially useful is using editable sketch dimensions, which is a nice alternative to opening the Change Parameters form, though it seems that displaying/hiding the dimensions could get tedious.