Which plane should I draw on?

[Anonymous]

I am trying to understand the behavior of Fusion 360 when selecting a plane to sketch on. In this case I have a face on top of a body and that's the only thing I want to sketch on unless I say otherwise. Why does Fusion 360 create multiple things that I can sketch on and then split them up into separate constructs? I don't want this behavior unless I explicitly choose it.

Given my components in the video, what is the difference between

1. Select the top portion of a body and hit sketch

2. Select "Sketch2" and hit sketch

3. Select "Top of base" and hit sketch

How can I tell which plane a sketch is tied to? How can I view a plane and only see the sketches on that plane (all of them)? How do I merge these sketches so that they are 1 combined sketch? In this particular case, I don't want 3 different planes. I want 3 different sketches on the same plane. Or is that what I already have and I'm not interpreting things correctly? If so, how do I see that this is the case?

BTW, I had to create two tangent planes to the cylinder to make two holes in it. F360 lets me see those planes very clearly and it's obvious to me what I should click on when I want to sketch on those planes. Why does this not apply to anything else I sketched on?

Eric

[Oceanconcepts · Accepted solution]

They are not the same thing- you are selecting in the first instance a face on a body, when selecting sketches in the browser you are highlighting the sketch itself (but not editing it). Your three options differ in what element in the design the new sketch is linked to. The options are there because you created them by creating a face and sketches based on them. 

If you want the sketch to be tied to the top face of the rectangular solid: 

1) Select Create Sketch 

2) Select in the drawing the face you want the sketch to be based on. If there are multiple objects visible, as in your having other sketches plus the body face with visibility turned on, you can select (left mouse button) and hold until the sub-menu pops up, then select which element you want to base the sketch on. Elements will highlight as you scroll through the submenu. Press and hold for eliminating selection ambiguity is an important Fusion interface principle. 

No problem with making as many sketches as you want based on the same face. 

If you then for instance move the face of the solid to make it thinner or thicker, the sketch will follow. Any parametric constraints (say if you had a midline defined) will also follow edits to the base solid. 

Merging sketches is something that in parametric mode could be done by projecting sketch lines from one sketch to another. You could end up with convoluted dependencies, it would probably be best to redraw the sketch elements all in one sketch if you don’t want the sketches to be separate, or simply add them to a sketch you already have. 

In your case I wonder if starting with a sketch, then creating the rectangle and other elements from that, would prove easier. 

Construction planes, like your two tangent planes, are clearly visible as long as you have their visibility turned on. A sketch that exactly coincides with the face of a visible solid can be harder to see, but if you adjust the visibility of the underlying solid, or turn it off, the sketches will be clearer. 

And thanks for the screencast, it makes it so much easier to understand questions. 

Hope this helps.

[TrippyLighting]

When yu select the face of a body with a single left click it will select eh body in the browser. When you then select the sketch icon in the menu bar it will start a sketch on the selected face of that body.

When you select an already existing sketch in the browser it highlights the face you started that sketch on. 

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I should have responded earlier. That explained things a bit more and helped me understand what was going on. Thank you very much for taking the time to write an answer.

For Autodesk: I have stopped using Fusion 360 and went back to Tinkercad (and not due to pricing). F360 is a very simple and easy to use product when it comes to certain concepts and features. But what trips me up all of the time and costs me hours of frustration to no end is the user interface. I often know exactly what I want to do but can't figure out the right steps and in what order. It is unfortunate you have slowed down development of Tinkercad because if you added just a few more features to that product, many non-professionals who need some complexity would not need F360 at all. In fact, I would not be surprised if at some point someone finally cracks the nut with an intermediate product (between Tinkercad and F360) that can do most things F360 does on a design level but in a much more intuitive fashion. If you are not a professional but still need to do something with some level of complexity, then that middle ground product would be amazing. 

Eric