Drafting Standards Guru's Question (Construction / Extension Lines)

[jeanchile]

I'm kind of old, and used to draw by hand back before this sorcery known as computers was invented. When drawing by hand when we had a dimension to something and further down the line there was another "something" that was supposed to be the same length and thus collinear, we would break the extension line around object lines but continue the line over to the next "something" to show that they were the same length.

That's a lot of words so there's a picture below.

My two questions for the drafting standards gurus are:

1.) Is creating these lines covered, mandated, or prohibited in any drafting standard that you know of (i.e. where did I learn to do this and is it correct)?

2.) Is there a tool in the drawing environment in IV that does this?

Currently we are left with either drawing one in using a sketch or using the centerline tool. What I need is a tool that works just like the centerline tool but with a different line type that way we could use it to connect auxiliary projected views and such.

[blair]

Good question. I don't ever recall running lines from view to view but since each company can have their own deviation in standards and the whole idea of drawings is to convey the designers/drafters intent to aid in the item being correctly built. What ever gets the job done without any errors is the correct standard.

That being said, the only way I can think of to do this would be to place a sketch on your drawing and then Project any required geometry into the sketch to allow for the required lines to be created.

[PaulMunford]

Nope, never seen that before. When we drew by hand we would have put these construction lines in to help us draw the shapes. It works pretty well to leave them in to show the relationship 😉

Could you use a 2 point construction line and switch it's later?

[jeanchile]

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@PaulMunford wrote:

Could you use a 2 point construction line and switch it's later?

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Interesting question here Paul. Can you elaborate on what you're saying here? I'm wondering if there is a tool for this I haven't tried.

That being said, if no one else in the world does this (and the shop doesn't ask for it) I'm not going to force the issue. I'm sure this is a hold-over from my hand drafting days and a remnant of the exact process you describe using projection lines to help draw the geometry. I've always left some of those in to illustrate the projection points (when there's a hole centerline I use that).

Like this:

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi jeanchile,

I only skimmed though the posts above due to time restraints, so I likely missed the point, but see this link and see that gives you some ideas:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/construction-lines-on-the-inventor-drawing/m-p/3263062...

Feel free to ignore this post if I'm way off the mark.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Mark.Lancaster]

@jeanchile

I've never seen or heard of this even in my days of board drafting... 

But my last job.. We would have a "ground line" that would represent the mounting surface of our filtration skid that went across the left, front and right side view.   It was a phantom line and it was based on (or locked to) projected drawing view geometry of the one of the mounting pads in the front view.

[jeanchile]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

Hi jeanchile,

I only skimmed though the posts above due to time restraints...

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Ha! That's because I have always been able to type like 60 words per minute and that makes my responses stupid long, sorry.

What I'm talking about is shown in the image I grabbed from Google above (sorry copyright holder) but is also shown in all my Technical Drawing books (admittedly the newest one I have is from 2002 though).

We used to leave a few of these in on our "auxiliary" views to show the relationship and to "project" dimensions where needed.

Turns out I may be the only one in history that used to do that. The books I have show them but I didn't read through it to see if it specifically tells me to erase them after I drew them.

[blandb]

In relation to the floor plane from the above post, we always just "included" origin planes into our model to keep from placing in an additional center line.

I always make the XZ the floor plane, and then include that into the drawings for finished floor. Also works for center lines on a part.

see image for example. The origin planes were "included" into the views to be center lines or finished floor representations. works with axis as well.

 

[PaulMunford]

Great tip Blanb