controlling diagonal anything

[kgatzke]

It should be as simple as snapping to the intersection of two planes, then snapping to the intersection of two other planes, and you're done.

How is it was supposed to work?  Because the feeling I get is it's just on random.  And the explanations in forums of how to go about doing it properly offer so many alternative methods, none of which are working for me, and the professionals I rely upon could only suggest setting them by trial and error.

All I want is some diagonal lines to express the direction of swing on a double bifold door.  Out of all of these I can only get one panel to work.

[taituai]

Not quite sure what you're trying to do exactly. But try using the snap commands while dragging the end points. e.g. SE snap endpoint or SI snap intersection to get the lines to do what you want to do.

[L.Maas · Accepted solution]

To get things under control you would use reference planes and lines. Depending on the desired result you control the position of the reference planes/lines with constraints/formulas. You constrain your objects to those reference planes and you have complete control over position.

As an example. These lines are completely constrained to the reference planes. If I make it wider or higher the lines will stay constrained to the reference planes

If needed I also could have used angle parameters to constrain the lines in a different way,

[kgatzke]

At first I thought this wasn't working because either one line would slip past a reference plane or I would get an error message telling me I was trying to over constrain the lines. You have to very carefully draw your symbolic lines always snapping to the intersections of the planes and not endpoints in extrusions, sweeps, etc. You need to see the two reference planes highlight in blue and a purple X appear at the intersection point. Then using the Align tool select the planes and then tab through till you see a blue dot at the end of the line, click once, then lock the padlock. You need to do this twice for each end point, once for horizontal and once for vertical. The middle where the two symbolic lines meet counts as one endpoint. Try to align it twice and you'll get an over constrain error.

Thank you.