Snap sketch to origin or centerline

[Anonymous]

Folks,

I keep finding areas in F360 where a task that is absolutely trivial in Swerks or Pro-E is simply unfathomable in F360.  I’m frustrated that I can’t puzzle through the magic sequence of work-arounds to be able to make simple geometry that captures design intent and/or to make simple assemblies that give me flexibility to experiment with my designs.

While it is encouraging to see many new features being pushed to F360, it is very disheartening to see that so many of the core usability issues around easily creating and assembling good geometry are still not addressed after so many release cycles.  It makes me worry that 2 years from now new users will face the same hurdles of a very unintuitive toolset. Of course there have been software packages that have managed to flourished with such shortcomings (SAP comes to mind) but this is generally the exception not the rule . . .

Regardless, the issue at hand today is as follows; I’ve got a fairly simple body that I’ve imported into F360 from another CAD package.  I reoriented the geometry to line up with the default origin planes in the file.  Now I am trying to add a rectangular thru-hole feature into the existing geometry.  I want to line the center of the rectangle (using center-rectangle sketch tool) with one of the planes of my origin normal to my sketch plane and finding that while the center of the rectangle origin “snaps” to line up with the normal plane, it is not in fact anchored there.  Adding dimensions to the rectangle demonstrates that fact as the edges of the rectangle remain blue when it is not fully constrained relative to the origin plane.  I’ve included a screenshot to demonstrate.

I’m hoping there is a simple constraint option I am missing in the sketch palette, but any attempts to use any of the constraints on the palette merely anchored the entire rectangle in place - not what I wanted it to do - I’d like to lock it to the origin plane that is normal to the sketch plane and just dimension off the upper edge of my geometry to set the position of the rectangle relative to the edge.  Is there an easy way to do this - preferable without resorting to projecting geometry?  Projecting is one of those areas where I think F360 is pretty weak when lined up against the competition.

Also, prior to submitting to IdeaStation, are there plans to move the dimension tool onto the Sketch palette?  I can’t fathom why it isn’t there already as you always need it, and now it is several clicks away unless you anchor it to the main top tool palette.

Thanks,

Art

[HughesTooling]

There is no way to constrain a point to an axis, the only way to do what you want is draw a vertical line from the origin. I put this on the Ideastation last November, see point 4 link

I've watched a few YouTube videos by Autodesk employees where the first thing they do in a sketch is draw 2 axis lines so you'd think it would have ben added by now. 

[daniel_lyall]

how many vid`s do they do that are best practices???  @HughesTooling yes your idea`s are sound 

you can add a point from sketch and give it a demention then do a centre rectangle that`s a work around 

[HughesTooling]

I found this YouTube vid again just because I'd made a comment on it. If you watch it through he draws one or both axis lines in most of the sketchs.

Flat-pack furniture design

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

As others have commented already you can draw a vertical line from the center point. Given that you've got axes it seems unnecessary, but then it is not exactly a big deal either.

Solid Works has a number of features that are not present in Fusion 360. It also has a several magnitudes higher price tag and approaching a 20 year development history.

then, again, you cannot work with T-Splines in SW. So there are also things in Fusion that other CAD software does not have.

[Anonymous]

Hi Trippy,

While I will agree that Swerks has a much longer development history than F360, certainly Autodesk has been making CAD longer than almost anyone else still in the game.  I have Inventor as well as Swerks and both of them have this simple functionality - so I don't think the F360 team can claim they don't know how to do it; if they wanted to put this feature in, I suspect it would be a quick walk down the hall to talk witht the Inventor team.

In fact, thinking of it, when looking at Inventor and F360 side by side, there are a lot of similarities in workflow, tools,menu palettes, etc, I bet there is at least some shared code, or perhaps ported code as I belive F360 is built on QT and I doubt inventor is.

For me, zippy stuff like T-splines are great, but if the MCAD pacakge can't first handle the most basic stuff - quickly creating simple geometery and assemblies - that needs to be put at hih priority into the backlog.

In any case, thanks for answering the question, case closed, I will merrily proceed onward.

Art

[NicolasXu · Accepted solution]

Hi CadZebra,

Besides creating the horizontal/vertical lines, there is another workaround to constrain the center of the rectangle to the origin axis – we can add the Horizontal/Vertical constraint directly between the center and the origin point (which is invisible by default).

Please refer to the gif below for details.

The commands in sketch Palette cannot be customized so far, but in the latest update, we can use the keyboard shortcut "D" to invoke the sketch Dimension command.

Best Regards,

[daniel_lyall]

good stuff

[Anonymous]

Hi Nicolas,

Hah, that is a clever hack, in some ways cleaner than adding construction lines.

Thanks!

Art