Referecing items in the background

I’m making a sketch and I want to reference elements in my sketch to items in the background. For example, I want to make a line endpoint coincident with an existing 3d model edge. I can’t see a way to do that. Am I missing something?

Also, I find myself using construction geometry for nearly everything. Is this normal? Do most people leave sketches underconstrained? I’m an old school Solidworks user maybe trying to shed some ingrained habits. I’m just thinking if they are going to go the route of history-based, they are also going to have to fully constrain sketches. It seems I’m missing something basic about the sketching workflow. Con someone enlighten me?

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Hi Matt,

We are working on this. At the moment you need to project the edge to your sketch if it’s not on the sketch’s plane. This is a limitation of the beta version and will be fixed soon.

What features do you miss that make you use construction geometry more than usual?

Well, being able to reference the origin, the X, Y Z axes, planes. Two endpoints of an arc that need to be horizontal from one another… align the center point of a circle or an arc on a mid plane… I find new things every time I need to sketch another feature.

In addition to creating relations to existing edges, I can’t create relations between two sketches to get features lined up.

There really should be a tool to just draw construction geometry, or convert it as you’re drawing.

Also, when creating a 3 point plane or a 2 point axis, only edges highlight, corners or points don’t highlight.

It looks like the only real references you have in the model are the Origin, Horizontal and Vertical. This needs to include sketches, edges, axes, planes, centerpoints…

It’s hard to do anything with any sophistication at all without the ability to reference geometry outside the sketch.

Yes, these are all coming in the next couple of months. Going from direct modeling to parametric requires significant improvements in our sketch engine. Lots of work to do, but we are making very good progress.

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Ok, thx for the honesty.

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Meanwhile projecting edges works fairly well, with a single click. I know that ideally we shouldn’t have that extra click, it will be improved soon.

Ok, I think that will do for now.

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Referencing the origin and axes, projected edges, silhouette edges.

One situation was almost impossible. I had a plane on an angle and tried to reference an axis at the plane/axis intersection point. I kind of gave up an faked it.

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On the roadmap, coming soon!