Hi, thanks for reading. I want to do an auto line between 2 planes. How can I get the line from one plane to the other? And straight? Having a time with this. Any insight is greatly appreciated.
not sure exactly what you mean, but if you open the construction dialogue and change out of auto while watching the graphic window, does it not show you what that result is?
Auto is probably going to try and intersect the two planes, so I'm guessing you don't want that. Best Fit, maybe? Not sure why you would do that though.
If what you want is a line (probably 3D) from centroid of plane one to centroid of plane two (what I believe Best Fit would do), you could make a point from each plane, then a line from the points.
If you want a line perpindicular to a plane, make a generic feature, set the XYZ to Pln1.X, Pln1.Y, Pln1.Z and then do the same for I J K, Pln1.I, Pln1.J and Pln1.K.
Then intersect that line with the second plane, and you could get a distance point to point along that line, if you need that for some reason. Easier ways to get a distance, but you might want that specific value for some reason.
Are you in the correct Workplane as well? If your planes are both in the Z Vector you'll need to change your Workplane to X or Y unless you're doing a 3D line. Like Caemgen above mentioned, you should be using Construction.
If you're looking for the straightness of a edge, you have to construct a set of edge points, then a line through them (but I wouldn't be sure of accuracy).
If the edge is inside a "V", you can create some center points (scan) and then construct a line. In this case, the line passes through center ball, so "far" from material edge.
Thanks for the responses. I appreciate all of your time.
The way I do it as of now is to make two points, align them to each other (right across from each other) then make a line. Was just looking to save time.
Say I have a square cut out, I wanted to make an auto line from one face to the adjacent face just using auto line instead of points then making a line. Thaks again for all the insight everyone.
It first sounds like you are not measuring planes then making a line between them, you are measuring points and making a line between them.
I don't see a reason to align point to point before making the line, best fit will go from point to point. I also don't know what you'd do with it, since you don't know if the points were perfectly opposite each other with respect to the actual orientation of the slot, and therefore may or may not be a representation of the slot width.
But you then say square slot and ADJACENT (touching) sides.
That would be two planes, construct line, leave it on auto, it will make a line right up the corner intersection.
If you want the corner between two adjacent flat surfaces, I would measure planes and intersect them in the create feature -> Line tool.
If you are trying to measure a width, and believe it will be pretty consistent as manufactured, I'd measure two planes and ask for the distance between them parallel to a part axis.
If I thought the slot would be crooked to the axes, I'd align one plane, then ask for the location of the other (in Y or X or whatever, since I aligned one, it would be zero, no distance necessary). In theory you can do this by telling the distance tool that you want the distance parallel to or perpendicular to the feature input, but I am a control freak and want to know and see precisely what is happening, so if I'm not distancing to an axis, I do this, though it should be over-kill.
If I thought it might be crooked and inconsistent in width, and it had a tolerance making me concerned about being out of spec, I'd measure a plane and align it.
I'd then measure that plane again with typed in (lets say I leveled it to ZPLUS and zeroed Z) X and Y hits so they were in a very specific location.
I'd then measure the other plane with the same exact X and Y.
Then I'd distance between opposing points.
