Hi Guys,
Some advice about sketching and moving stuff.
Remember that designing is about good planning. If you are designing an engine it is rare you might start with, say,
a piston ring as your first component and build the rest from there. You would usually start with the engine block and
build assemblies and sub assemblies from there. So to start with you need a good plan.
Your plan will seldom be perfect so learning how to manipulate the timeline to keep everything together is a very
good skill to learn early. Planning and keeping stuff grouped makes things much easier.
There will be times when you will make either mistakes or you will want to calf off copies of components and
assemblies and will need to move them in the browser tree. While there are times when you both can and want
to do this, you need to do it the right way. Make sure you have selected the correct component in the browser tree
before you make a copy. It is possible to copy both a single component and sub-assemblies and they will go into
the tree under whichever component is active at the time.
There are also times when you may wish to simply drag a component into an assembly using the browser tree. You
really want to avoid it if possible but you can do it. Good planning will reduce the times you will need to do this. We
always want to find short cuts and ways to cut down the workload but you need to do it the right way, not just
because you either made a mistake or because you can.
So. Sketches. If you are planning correctly and being careful how you activate components then it is very easy to
either keep all of your sketches together in the top component, or individually in sub-components, assemblies, or
sub-assemblies that they are associated with. Some people will do this all top, others all associated and some will
mix the workflow. As you gain more experience you will learn when it is appropriate. The one golden rule you should
remember is be CONSISTENT. Don't start off one way and change your mind in the middle - it WILL confuse either
you or others looking at your design.
You can also simply drag a sketch to move it and you can copy a sketch but a sketch should be simple and only do a
few things at most to help you create a base shape to use the tools on. Good workflow is not so much to just copy
a sketch to somewhere else but to project the bits you want from the original sketch into the new sketch associated
with the component you are working on. The main reason for this is it keeps everything associated with the part
you are creating and shows the relationship of that part with another part.
In a nutshell it comes down to planning well; manipulate the timeline when necessary; stick to a workflow and be
consistent; create new sketches and project the older geometry you need.
I helped another person today and their design had 60 sketches and apart from a few constraint issues he wanted
help with, all the sketches were fairly simple. All his sketches were associated with the top component but he just
as easily could have associated it with the other components in the design.
Everything you do in the browser tree will depend on which component is active so keep good track of it. If you
make a mistake then fix it EARLY to save much pain later. It is much easier to fix a mistake straight away than just
before you have finished. Similarly make all sketches fully constrained and fix all red and yellow flags as soon as
you notice them. They are much easier to fix before you have created other geometry that depends upon a flagged
part.
Cheers
Andrew
