New to Inventor - question about Reference Curves

[Tom_Servo]

What's the reason or advantage to having reference curves visible outside of a sketch? 
Being new to Inventor, I realize that I may not see the benefits of them but they seem to just clutter up the model. 
With solid models we have the sketches hidden but we use skeletons and the reference curves are getting real messy. 

Here's a screen shot of what I'm referring to.

Thank you,

JG

[blandb]

Can you share the file, maybe they are referencing radii, other dims, using it to constrain to?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I believe you are talking about the behavior that projected workaxis or workplane becomes bigger as you add more sketch geometry. It was meant to ensure the projected geometry always stays bigger than other sketch geometry.

We do have some issues there. Sometimes, it can grow out of control and it does not shrink back even when scope of the sketch has been reduced.

Many thanks!

[James_Willo]

If you are talking about actual reference geometry (dashed lines), they are used for construction, so you can control geometry position and shape, but it will be ignored by extrusion and other commands. It can help you make your sketches much simpler, and then you turn some of the lines into construction lines later so that the extrude command etc doesn't try to extrude that particular line. 

By making them visible outside of where you are using them you can project them into other sketches if you need to reference that same geometry in another sketch. 

[SBix26]

From your screenshot, another problem for you is the color scheme.  Inventor's built-in color schemes have distinctive colors for different sketch elements so that their status can be quickly discerned by everyone except those with color-blindness.  A scheme of white sketch elements on a dark background hides much useful information from the user, and would make me crazy in a matter of minutes!

With skeletal modeling, though, I can see where you might want to make each sketch its own distinct color in order to keep track of them.  But I think if it were me I would try to at least make construction geometry and/or projected geometry a slightly different shade from the normal sketch elements.

---

Sam B

Inventor Pro 2023 | Windows 10 Home 21H2

[Tom_Servo]

Wouldn't you want to reference the original reference instead of the one from a sketch? I can think of why not to do that but I can't think of a reason that's better. 

What not to do:
original reference is plane A
sketch 1 references plane A

sketch 2 references the reference line from sketch 1

Delete sketch 1 and sketch 2 fails.

This method creates an unnecessary dependency. 

What to do:

original reference is plane A
sketch 1 references plane A

sketch 2 references plane A

Delete sketch 1 and sketch 2 is fine.

[Tom_Servo]

This has nothing to do with my color scheme. 

Regardless of the color of the reference curves, they are still visible when not editing the sketch. 

[Tom_Servo]

I'm not talking about how the projected references become larger and don't shrink back but that is also very annoying.
My OP was about how disorganized the model looks when you are creating skeleton models.