Changing the orientation of the sketch coordinates

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Have you ever put a sketch on the non-orthogonal face/plane and couldn’t manage the coordinate system? 

Putting a sketch on such geometry creates coordinate system that is an orthogonal projection of global coordinate system (Img. 1). Setting view to “Normal to” orientates under-defined coordinate system in terms of global triad (Img. 2), because sketch origin doesn’t overlap with any orthogonal direction.

 

Coordinates

Img. 1. Orthogonal projection of global coordinate system         Img. 2. “Normal to” orientation

 

An additional problem that may occur is the way of setting horizontal and vertical relation in terms of this sketch.

img 3

Img. 3 Horizontal and vertical sketch relations

In the Img. 3, horizontal relation is defined along the shorter axis of coordinate system and vertical one along the longer axis, regardless of the view that we set.

 

What If we could move sketch origin?

img 4

We can do it easily by following steps below:

  1. Use the construction geometry to set the value for move and rotation img 5
  2. If needed, delete all external relations img 6

 

img 7

  1. Using “Modify Sketch” tool (Tools > Sketch Tools > Modify) click

img 8

  • Type values for move (-/+ defines direction of move)

img 9

 

  • Move the rotation point to sketch origin img 10
  • Type values for rotation (-/+ defines direction of rotation) img 11
  1. After deleting construction lines, orientation and position of coordinate system complies with conditions and “normal to” view looks like below:

img 12

 

Extra information:

  • You can modify presented algorithm
  • First of all you need to rotate coordinate system in relation to the sketch origin img 13
  • Now you have to type the value for move in Y direction img 14

 

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