Scaling and preventing distortion

[kellyWT9NF]

Trying to scale down my drawing slightly. I attached a file. The drawing is of text I had to draw out (not using the text tool). I ended up with a whole mess of constraints that I'm not certain need to be there and if that is potentially my issue when trying to scale down. What I'm seeing on my end when I attempt to scale down from 100% to 0.95% is the second "E" begins to distort. I tried to "fix" the entire text but then I don't seem to have any ability to scale. Is there a way that I can constrain the parts of that second letter E so it stays put or is it possible to remove much of the constraints that could be creating the issue? Is there a way to lock in the general shape while still being able to scale?

On another note, I've asked on this forum about my computer compatibility with fusion and the issues with my computer locking up. Largely most of my issues I've encountered have been with this project. If anyone can take a look at this and give me any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[TheCADWhisperer · Accepted solution]

@kellyWT9NF 

You might consider creating the solid geometry and then Scale that rather than the sketch.

For this design - I would consider creating a different sketch for each letter to reduce the number of geometry constraints per sketch.  I would fully define the first sketch. Every sketch after that can be parametrically tied to the first sketch for easy editing.

The way you are doing it now I would refer to as the "House of Cards on a Foundation of Quicksand" technique.

I have seen some amazing houses of cards, but difficult to create and can come crashing down at any moment.

Improved technique with computationally efficient sketches should alleviate your computer processing issues as well.

[g-andresen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Scale from solids instead of scaling the sketch with their dependencies

günther

[kellyWT9NF]

Thanks for all the critiquing! And yes Id agree and that's a great way of putting it.. "house of cards on quicksand". I'm very much still trying to digest all this and how its supposed to work and figured however I was doing this and then chopping back out so many pieces to eventually be left with the image I was left with. lol! So, it was working. I've burned one design out already and looks totally fine.. but I'm finding I need to resize it some and of course I had a hunch that all the mess of constraints could had been what was bogging the system down as well.

I will dig into this and try some of these recommendation's over the weekend. Thanks for your time and input!

[kellyWT9NF]

Thanks for demonstrating this! I will give this a closer look tonight or over the weekend and see if I can make some sense of this. I believe in both comments here you guys are mentioning to scale the solid. Am I correct that by scaling the solid you mean to extrude the piece and then scale that???

[kellyWT9NF]

I do have a question on sketches.. you mentioned to do each letter on its own sketch to reduce the geometry constraints per sketch.. then tie the sketches together? Ive definitely not been doing this. What I have been doing is creating multiple sketches for much of my work but I have zero idea how to tie them together. So what I have been doing is refining each sketch as close to what I want them to look like and then creating a "final" sketch where I copy each sketch and paste in the final. Then any points that overlap that I dont know I just cut out. So yes as you say Im then back to one sketch with alot going on. However this has been the first design to really give this much grief. lol!

Can you explain how to tie the sketches together?

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@kellyWT9NF wrote:
Can you explain how to tie the sketches together?

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Mash p for Project of key points from one sketch to another sketch.

You can also used named parameters (dimensions) from one sketch to another.

[kellyWT9NF]

This worked out great! Thank you for this demo!