Positioning components relative to bodies

[ddixonva]

OK so as a newbie to 360 I'm finding a few things here and there that I just can't figure out.

OK, I have a body.  It's a box.

I inserted two knobs from the MMC catalog. 

I was able to edit the knobs themselves, and to align them such that they sit on the surface of the box.   

What I can't find, though, is how to align them in relative positions to the box.  Say I want the knobs to each be 10mm LxW from their nearest corners.   I can't figure out how to do this relative positioning.    Help?

Thanks!

[laughingcreek]

best practice would be to make the box a component also.  then use joints to put the knobs on the box.

You can place a sketch on your box and dimension a point (or some other sketch entity) to the point you want to put a knob.  Then use that as the anchor point for a joint.

[ddixonva]

I just came back to this project after bring busy with other things awhile...

OK, so, I've sketched a couple of circles on the face of the box, and dimensioned them out such that they're in the right places.    Now I cannot for the life of me figure out how to create a joint between those circles' origins and the knobs' centers.

=0(

[laughingcreek]

Maybe this screencast will help.  The first half uses a joint, the second half uses the Align command.  The joint command is parametric, and only works on components.  Align will work on plan bodies or components, but isn't parametric

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

ok, here's the screen cast. oops

[ddixonva]

Thanks - it took me a few tries but finally I created sketch points on the box face (which i made a component) and then used a rigid joint.  But the first couple times it moved the box lid to the knob location, which was weird.

[laughingcreek]

To keep the box lid in place, up can either ground it, or join it to something that is grounded.  Then the knob will move to the lid instead. 

To ground, right mouse click the component in the tree and select ground.

[ddixonva]

Oh it seemed to just matter which object I selected first when creating the joint.

[laughingcreek]

while pick order does effect the movement of components when applying joints, it's not a good idea to rely on that for positioning.  Grounding ensures that everything ends up where it's suppose to.

a screen cast to illustrate-