Inventor create work plane by rotating XY about Y axis reorients plane

[garethkaps]

Hi,

I'm struggling to understand the logic behind work plane orientation when creating work planes by rotating from an origin plane, and was hoping someone could help!

We work with XY being the 'front' plane, which works fine - a sketch on XY has the X axis pointing right, vertical lines are vertical on the screen etc.

If I create a new work plane by selecting XY and the Y axis and inputting an angle, the plane orientation and therefore sketch orientation on that plane rotates about the work plane Z axis in addition to the RY requested, so any sketches pasted onto this plane also rotate, and my horizontal and vertical constraints flip.

You can see the reorientation happen on the work plane title text in the screenshot below. 'Work Plane 1' was created by selecting the XY plane and the Y axis, and inputting 10°.

Work Plane 1 created by rotating XY by 10° about Y

I cannot understand why this small rotation results in a re-orientation of the plane itself! Individual sketches placed onto the rotated plane can be re-re-oriented individually but it would be far easier to be able to do this to the plane itself, or better still, stop it from happening in the first place!

To add to my confusion, rotating YZ about Y does not result in the same work plane reorientation. Apologies for the poor colours but hopefully you can see that the plane title text is in the same place and the same orientation.

Can anyone help me to understand the logic behind this rotation and / or how it can be stopped or corrected?

Thanks!

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I believe this may have something to do with how Inventor chooses coordinate system or keeps the sense of X and Y on the workplane. Inventor does have some unintuitive behaviors. For reference, you can try the following and see the behavior.

Create a sketch on each of the angled workplanes. Then finish the sketch and right-click on the sketch -> Edit Coordinate System. You will see the workplane label is always at the top of Y.

Many thanks!

[garethkaps]

Thanks for your response!

Do you know if there is anything we can do about this unintuitive behaviour?

I have been pointed towards using 'Parallel and Perpendicular' constraints instead of horizontal and vertical, but have also seen some warnings on this - https://applieddesignintelligence.com/the-autodesk-inventor-default-setting-from-hell/ 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Unfortunately, there isn't much one can do. The Workplane labels are based on the internal orientation selection. For 2D sketch, you can edit the sketch coordinate system to mitigate the behavior.

Many thanks!