Add CTRL behavior to Horizontal and Vertical sketch constraint.

[Boudeweyn]

If you choose a horizontal constraint and you realize that you need a vertical constraint, then you need to select the vertical constraint.
Despite the fact that we are now in 2015 get a preview to see what is horizontal or vertical.
Add a CTRL action, so that horizontal changes to vertical as soon as you press the CTRL.
Ditto for vertical to horizontal constraint.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

I agree with mcgyvr, an option for hot key could be great, and honestly space bar sound good to me too.

[lch]

And an indicator on what is horizontal and vertical of the drawing - as it is shown at any given point at the screen, would be nice.

This is to avoid picking the wrong constrant ex. picking the horizontal, when it actually is the Vertical needed.

I don.t think the XYZ is logical enough.

[SBix26]

In Application Options > Sketch tab, turn on Axes and/or Coordinate system indicator.  The vertical axis is the lighter weight line, the horizontal is the heavier weight line, and these correspond to the Y and X axes.

Sam B

Inventor Professional 2016 R3 SP1 Update 1
Vault Basic 2016 SP1
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, SP1

[PaulMunford]

Hi Ich. Something like this was added in inventor 2016 to the vertical and horizontal constraint tools. Have You checked it out?

[pdecker]

I encourage my team to model parts as they would exist when in the real world. this emans that front is front, top is top, etc. The view cube is great for this. I also think the XYZ axes should follow suit. Then I have to ask...

Also, when I select X-Z plane for new sketch, it rotates to view normal but sideways (have to rotate view 90 degrees CCW to have FRONT at bottom).

[lch]

Hi.

To sbixler

I don't find the coordinate indicator good enough.

Can't really see the difference in the line weight on XY.

To PoulMunford.

Im not sure what you are refering to.

Could you be a little more specific? 

[jtylerbc]

It looks to me like your Horizontal / Vertical issue is an oddity of the YZ plane.  The others seem to me to behave the way you are describing.  It seems like X direction is defined as Horizontal, and Y or Z as vertical.  In the YZ plane, they had to choose which of the normally-vertical axes would be redefined as Horizontal.  I'm not sure I agree with the way they did it (your proposed scenario makes more sense to me also).  I'm also not sure that it would be possible to change the way that works now without wreaking havoc on existing models.

As for the rotation when creating a sketch, what it is actually doing is rotating to what Inventor thinks is the closest orientation.  If you rotate your view closer to the "Front Down" orientation you are requesting before clicking the plane, it will orient the way you are asking.  I believe your requested behavior here was the old behavior a few years ago, and that it was changed because it often caused the sketch to rotate upside-down from how the user was already viewing the model (in order to reach the "standard" sketch orientation).  This may be desirable for some, but was infuriating for others. 

Go to Application Options.  On the Display tab, at the very bottom, there is a setting called "Look At Behavior".  I believe that if you change that from "Perform Minimum Rotation" to "Align with Local Coordinate System", it will behave the old way.  This may be closer to what you want, or it may be even worse (may be upside-down from what you want in some cases). 

[PaulMunford]

I'm refering to the tracking lines that apear when you place vertical and horizonral constraints...

[pball]

From my simple test the "Align with local coordinate system" setting always puts X horizontal and Y vertical when making a sketch on an XY plane. Thanks jtylerbc for suggesting that, I'll be using that setting now. I'll never understand why software people have to change the default behavior of software every so often.

[jtylerbc]

In this case, they didn't just arbitrarily change it.  It was changed in response to complaining about the old behavior, due to it sometimes flipping the model upside down rather than using the closest orientation.

I remember that in my previous job, that behavior often drove me crazy.  I was often modeling legacy parts from old drawings, and would orient my model on the screen to match the orientation of a view on the drawing I was referencing.  If I oriented it before creating the sketch, Inventor would flip the model around to whatever the "standard" orientation for the view was, and then I would have to go rotate the view again.  Many people complained about this behavior a few releases ago, and the "Minimum Rotation" option was added in response.

[Anonymous]

I believe shift should be used as this is the toggle key for trim/extend and for consistency I think the same toggle key should be used.

Another way of looking at it is the vertical constraint button is selected you could use either shift or ctrl or spacebar to toggle and that way anyone can use whatever hot key they want whilst it is toggled.

[jholland3XDLM]

I have run into this fairly often. Its usually fairly easy to delete the wrong constraint and add the correct one, after all the OP called Inventor's idea of these constraints correct, but it is not always that simple. How about adding a third constraint and call them parallel to X,Y, or Z axis. In this manner I would be more aware of where the origin planes are. This will also work great in 3D sketches cutting down significantly the amount of construction geometry. 

[stuartmp]

Great idea a simple scroll of your mouse to switch between the two would be great.
--
Sent from my Android device

[c_stulz]

I vote for it, but I have one more whish for it(may be I have to start a new Idea?).

Please show the line (horizontal/vertical) before you snap to a point.

After snaping a point the line should change colour or style.

It is esear to realize the direction especially when the sketch is not aligned to XY.

Greatings

Christoph

[MrSmithtastic]

I was literally about to post about this but had a look before I did.

Using "Align with local coordinate system" works to some extent but then when you're drawing something on a side plane it flips the top round so that it's no longer on top. What's the point in that. I agree that the X,Y,Z should match what the view cube is saying. It surely can't be hard to have the things all matching?

[Anonymous]

For as long as I've been using Inventor, I've been frustrated with the frequency that the software interprets horizontal and vertical incorrectly. Take a look at my screenshot. Why does Inventor get this backwards so often? How long will it take Autodesk to fix this problem in their multi-million dollar product?

[mcgyvr]

Duplicate posting..

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/add-ctrl-behavior-to-horizontal-and-vertical-sketch-con...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/why-is-a-vertical-line-a-horizontal-constraint/idi-p/60...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/horizontal-amp-vertical-markers-in-sketch-mode/idi-p/46...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/horizontal-versus-vertical-contraint-2-confusion/idi-p/...

and I'm sure there are more...

[DRoam]

Once again...

This is because every Sketch has a local coordinate system associated with it. This is not obvious because Autodesk shortsightedly chose not to show any visual indication of this sketch LCS (local coordinate system) by default. Hence the countless posts with confusion about horizontal/vertical constraints.

If you enable the Sketch coordinate system indicator (in Options --> Sketch --> Display --> [✓] Coordinate system indicator), you'll notice that the Horizontal constraint is always parallel to the Sketch X-axis, and the Vertical constraint is always parallel to the Sketch Y-axis.

The inherent problem is twofold:

1. Inventor's automatic orientation for Sketches is often nonsensical and contradictory withthe View Cube/global CS
2. Inventor does not display the Sketch LCS by default, adding to the confusion

This has been discussed at length many times, all that's remaining is for Autodesk to address it. You can see my full diagnosis on the issue and what would fix it here, and you can vote on the Master idea (currently Accepted by Autodesk) here.

[tmueller6RR3D]

In the application options on the Display tab, the default operation for the look at tool is "minimum rotation". Change this to "Align with local coordinate system". That will always give you the correct vertical and horizontal IF you view your sketches using the look at tool. I'd like to see this be the default setting 

The change made in the 2016 product to preview horizontal & Vertical constraints was a nice step towards addressing this issue.