Macbook Air - Unable to confirm a transform

chris_hardaker

I am relatively new to this program. Testing it out on a robotics project and have struck the single most annoying thing.

I want to rotate a square object by 30 degrees. I select the object to edit, I select the center point of the square and I drag the arm around to 30 degrees. The object does not appear to rotate, so is the 30 degree rotation real? Is it actually trying to rotate the object 30 degrees about the center? No freaking idea. I then move the cursor away and it shows a mouse with a green tick on the left mouse button. I assume this means confirm. I do what I would normally do for a left click but nothing happens.

So, either the transform is not happening (indicated by the square not rotating during the dragging to set the 30 degrees) or the left click I normally use is not being recognised by the app.

Anyone know which is broken? This seems so counter intuitive. Given that the prompt is shown when I am outside the control area, why a left click is needed is totally unknown. Once option shows a dropdown menu, however that does not have a "confirm transform" option, just a cancel transform option. Why? This seems such an oversight.

Any ideas as to how I can solve this problem? I am almost done with this piece but this last detail has just burned a frustrating hour.

NeilCooke

I doubt it is broken or an oversight. It is not clear from your description what you are trying to do. Transform a part, sketch or assembly? Can you create a video?

bruce_williams

@chris_hardaker

Welcome to Onshape & the forum.

Forgive me - are you trying to transform rotate the 'object' in a sketch?  That is what I am understanding from your description.

Please see help here - https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/transform-sketch.htm?Highlight=transform for rotation the steps are - 
"When rotating via the manipulator, an angle field activates. Enter an angle, press Enter, and click in space to set the angle:"

If that is not what you are after, please post a picture or share your document.  You may be trying to transform a part in Part Studio or Assembly which is handled a little differently.

I hope that helps!

chris_hardaker

I have used the sketch function, selected the top plane to place my sketch, selected the centre point rectangle, click to place the centre, click to set the dimensions, type in the dimensions I really want, click on the transform tool, click on the centre point of the rectangle and the guide appears. Grab the guide and rotate. The sketch does not rotate.

The documentation says to click the sketch entities you wish to transform.

I obviously missed the section where it said that the square I just created, that is the focus of every other action I have just performed, is not considered an entity.

I have to select every individual line of the entity.

To be honest, why colour the space enclosed by the line if that is not an entity? I image a time when I would want to rotate a single line, however as every action I have performed up until clicking on the transform button as been about the rectangle, why is the rectangle sudden not considered an entity? The design I have for a simple part has maybe 150 lines.

I have since experimented a bit and discovered that a circle is an entity, which makes sense, however when I make a circle that overlaps another shape, the intersection space is considered an entity, even though it is made up of two lines, one curved and one straight (for example). There is no need to select both lines to transform this entity.

I realise that every program has it's way of doing things, however what is and is not an entity seems about a logical as masculine / feminine / neuter nouns in German.

NeilCooke

Hi @chris_hardaker - rectangles, polygons, etc. are there for convenience. They're really all just lines and arcs - you'll find this is the same in every professional CAD system. The area inside a closed loop is not an entity, it is a face that can be used later to create a solid feature and it is displayed "for convenience", to check that your sketch is valid for creating features. To understand all the nuances of this system, may I suggest investing some time with the free training videos at learn.onshape.com? Also, please ensure that your design doesn’t have 150 lines in one single sketch - it won’t work. 

chris_hardaker

Point taken. I still think that allowing a user to select a face and then, when they try to use a 2d tool on that face that swapping the selection to the lines associated with that face would make faces twice as convenient as they are.

I was hoping that this would enable my amateur team to collaborate on designs. Maybe it is because we are amateurs that many of our designs have over 150 faces and lines and objects. Guess we keep looking.

steve_shubin

@chris_hardaker

You said —
Any ideas as to how I can solve this problem?

It may be a constraint that’s keeping your rectangle from rotating

tim_hess427

@chris_hardaker - I think you'll find that in terms of mechanical CAD design software, Onshape is the best option right now for collaboration. Neil was not trying to say that Onshape will not work for you. I believe he was specifically trying to say that having a single sketch with 150 lines will not work well in Onshape and that there are better/more efficient ways to achieve what you want within Onshape. There are people that regularly make full assemblies with hundreds of parts (and probably more). 

Also - the folks here are pretty good at troubleshooting modeling issues. If you're able to share a public version of a document, I'm sure there are people that would be able to jump in and provide some tips or advice. 

chris_hardaker

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/88fe4f03c83c02f969b1c015/w/6f80c4c5e69c5791e6a7ebc6/e/de5319e3d20d6e069a4f5728

This is the simplest piece I am testing with.

I need to make some changes to this because it was designed without the power and control feed lines, plus we want to separate off the parts that we wish to print in blue.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2d25ba728d347dd1c77957f9/w/b00e3ea649cc8e8260d7aeee/e/d148680f22e37e1fd7f4da27

This is a piece that need breaking down into separate pieces as well. What I was attempting is to build a model under it as I could not export this in a format that parsed in the objects and faces.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/8188f13867ef375bb3802115/w/795e89f2daedcd0530895faf/e/d0e1cd31a6c03fc55b69e1da

This is a part that needs to be fully reworked as someone decided that the cover on top needed to be fixed, and the legs needed to be fixed and for there to be no way to animate the piece and make is so that an actuator can make this appear. We are looking at potentially putting a 5 injector pintle rocket here using propane and compressed air, so the actual "motor" design is needed for metal fabrication.

The team is 10 people distributed across time (as in globally, not as in historically).

If you look at the centre leg alone, which is the simplest piece, there are about 40 faces (many copies of faces moved to different locations). If you look at the more complex pieces, these are hundreds of faces, or dozens of faces dependant on which place you start at.

Yes, these are R2D2 parts and we are a bunch of amateurs trying to build a real one because our experience is in AI and self driving tech.

steve_shubin

@chris_hardaker

Regarding rotating a centerpoint rectangle

steve_shubin

bruce_williams

@chris_hardaker

The import is coming in as a single part.  So you will need to split into seperate parts using various modeling tools.  Onshape has a powerful set of direct editing tools.  Then you can freely export or color individual parts

Use assembly for motion, exploded views, or adding instances.

see this document for examples of both

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/536938fe7f98dc77971f6977/w/06d2a50e2f666d03c1ff5ee4/e/17332e3073d3750166de16b2

as @NeilCooke suggested - the learning center along with help files is excellent.

steve_shubin

@chris_hardaker

Feel free to put in as many lines as you want into a sketch — when using Onshape.

But first think about this.

You could take a set of blueprints for a house, and you can take all the different plan views and put them on one sheet. The foundation plan, the framing plan, floor plan, reflected ceiling, electrical, roof framing. You could combine all of these plans with foundation plan on the bottom, and the remaining superimposed over the top. But why in the world would anybody do it that way. It would just be a total mess to view and work with. It’s definitely better to break things out — to separate things into different plans or layers or sketches (features)

It doesn’t matter what CAD program you use. If you cram too many lines onto one sketch, it’s just going to slow you down. It’s going to make it harder to tell what is what and to select things. You’re going to spend a lot of time zooming in and zooming out. Working this way would be time consuming at best. 

In a modern CAD program like Onshape, there is definitely a more efficient way to make and modify your parts.

As others have said — if you need help, post the URL to your document, and give the specific question as to what you’re trying to accomplish