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In The Machine is the official blog of the Inventor Product Management Team. It is a way for us to share Inventor news, interesting information about successful Inventor customers and partners as well as tips and tricks. From time to time we’ll also use the blog to solicit feedback from users via surveys. This blog is hosted by Garin Gardiner our Technical Marketing Manager.
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Friday Quick Tip - Drawing Sketches
April 24, 2009, 12:46 AM Garin Gardiner
It's a safe guess that many of you spend a bit of time in the drawing environment of Inventor documenting your designs. The last few months I have been talking to a lot of Inventor users about creating drawings and have received several questions about adding sketch geometry to a view that is associative to the drawing view. An example of this is the need to add drawing details such as diagonal lines on the windows of the cab below to represent glass. Typically you would want the diagonal lines to update and move with the drawing view so they don't end up sitting in space if the view moves.
If you have tried this in the past and have noticed the sketch isn't associative to the view, let me give you a quick tip to create the sketch so it is linked to the drawing view. First select a view from the graphics window that you want to add a sketch to and select "Create Sketch" from the Model tab. The key is to select the view first, if you don't the sketch will not be associative to the view.
With the view selected and selecting "Create Sketch" you can now use the regular sketch tools to add things like diagonal lines to the drawing view. Once you have added the detail you want, return out of the sketch and you are done. You can now move the view around and the sketch is now fully locked to that view.
Enjoy the weekend!
2 Comments | Add Comment In the Machine > Tips, Inventor LT, Autodesk Inventor
Comments
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April 24, 2009 07:12 PM Brian Hall
It's also beneficial to project in any required geometry to the sketch. Doing that is a good way to quickly add hatch patterns to the model.
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May 1, 2009 06:03 PM Scott Moyse
Up until 2010 the project geometry thing hasn't worked that well. It doesn't seem to retain associativity like it does within the sketch environment of a part. I see in the release notes of 2010 that they explicitly state this is a new feature. I haven't had chance to play with it yet but i assume it is improved. the other important point to note, to make 100% sure your sketch lines move with changes, dimension them to projected lines from the view. Another cool tip with regards to making sure drawing objects update and move with changes to the model is with symbols. always use leaders but make them invisible, just uncheck the visibility box in the menu, that way they are associated with somethign in the view but they retain the look of freely placed symbols. There are also some very cool ways to make symbols change their text content automatically depending on parts you link them to when they are placed. Garin maybe you could do a podcast on some of this stuff. It all helps an awful lot for designs that go through several iterations. You barely have to go through and check that all the items are still in the same place in the idw.
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