Looking for a tutorial video on using the Triad

paul_bartlett

I am having a terrible time trying to use the Triad to approximately position  parts in an assembly. I am use to Inventor and this seems much more difficult. However building parts is much better in ONshape than inventor.

eric_pesty

The key thing with the triad manipulator is to realize you can snap its origin to any "implicit" mate connector point: after selecting a part, grab the center point and drag it around until it is snapped to your preferred reference.
I would suggest looking at material related to using mate connectors as this should get you on the right track with that part of the process. A useful trick to use the "shift" key to lock the reference entity to prevent it from jumping around as you narrow down to a specific point.

From there it should be pretty straightforward to use the translate and rotate manipulators... Note that while you are actively moving something a box will come up where you can type an exact value for the angle or distance.

Keep in mind you have the option to snap any of the axes (by right-clicking on the arrow manipulator) to + or - Z (if you need a reset from some arbitrary orientation you might have ended up in). Right clicking on the center point also gives you the option to move that point to the origin (without re-aligning).

That's about it really...

dirk_van_der_vaart

Another method is not needing mate connectors for positioning parts in an assembly by using a multiple part studio and creating parts in context.
Have a look at this
https://youtu.be/CNmRghXLnmo