I am used to the 2D world of Adobe Illustrator and I’m having a tough time using the Shapr3d sketching tool when it comes to aligning objects. Say I want to draw an ellipse and draw construction lines that pass through the center of the ellipse. I the 2D world I would just use the align tools (see attached) and it is done automatically. If I manually draw the lines in Shapr3d they never seem to be centered. Is there at least a clumsy way to to this sort of alignment in Shapr3D?
Midpoint constraint??
No, midpoint constraint is grayed out so it isn’t an option. When I select both lines it won’t let me select midpoint.
The very poor 2D sketch tools in Shapr3D really make me hate using it.
Draw the ellipse.
Draw the line so that it approximately goes through the midpoint of the ellipse.
Select line and press “Make Comsrruction”
Select the line and the center of the ellipse.
Select “Coincident” or “Midpoint” depending on what you want.
If midpoint isn’t an option, there must have been another constraint or the ellipse and line aren’t selected properly.
And yes, sketches can be very frustrating.
If your sketches on the same plane it is work…
Select the center of ellipse, select the line and midpoint constraint
Ok that shape is more complicated. That shape does not have a midpoint and I don’t think Shapr3d creates “midpoints” for any complex shape to use with constraints.
Also, you can’t select the midpoint of a line and another line and add a midpoint constraint. This should be added to Shapr3d.
Draw 2 line segments to/ from the center of the circle out of equal distant (you can use the = constraint if needed. Lock the lines. draw a line perpendicular as possible to them and choose perpendicular constraint relative to those lines. move the line to the center of the first two lines. That is one way. You can draw shorter lines over longer lines. Oh and repeat for the center line between the 2 arcs. Tricky use of line segments are sometimes needed in Shapr when dealing with irregular objects
For this shape just draw a rectangle then use arc to make the rounded ends and delete the two short edges of the rectangle.
I discovered the easiest way to do this. I just drew a rectangle 4mm x 8mm. I then extruded it through the material and then used 2mm fillets on the corners. Stupidly simple, but I made it hard by trying to use the sketch tools. I’m realizing that it’s best to keep the sketches to basic geometric shapes and then just use the tools like extrude and fillets to do most of the work in the 3D world.
