Sketching Tangent arcs - Best practice?

andrew_troup

When answering a question about sweeps, I found myself wondering how best to sketch the shape shown in this animation.
I have to confess to missing the Solidworks ability to toggle from lines to arcs and bacl, and wondered if anyone had found a nice workflow

The method in my clip is reasonably fast, but too premeditated and situation-specific for my liking.
I do like the ability to drag a three point arc until it infers tangency, though.

andrew_troup

@brucebartlett
SW, IIRC, toggles back again, if you just keep the mouse button down and return to the last endpoint ???
(there's also a toggle shortcut key, A, from memory?)

Another diff between OnS and SW: the latter permits box (window) selection of arc and circle centerpoints, and line endpoints, does it not? This makes it less fussy applying a coincident constraint, say between the arc centre and the vertical line at the end of my animation;
By dragging right to left a quick, roughly positioned mouse-swipe selects both entities.

andrew_troup

Where the SW tangent / line toggling really comes into its own, I reckon, is when modelling (say) roll-formed sheetmetal profiles, with DOZENS of contiguous lines and arcs, often with individual radius values, and frequently anchored/snapped, during lining out,  by their tangency points rather than their virtual sharp intersections. (So that "Fillet" is not an advantageous strategy)

Another great feature in SW in this connection is selective addition of constraints, so that (for instance) if you import a roll formed profile which is accurate, you can add with one click ALL the tangency constraints and/or horizontal/vertical constraints. However that is hardly core functionality, although nice-to-have in the fullness of time/

brucebartlett

No, I want what SW's has but with the ability to switch back to a straight line from the arc if I change my mind.

I have been temped to add this as a request, but don't think I have as yet.

andrew_troup

@brucebartlett
SW, IIRC, toggles back again, if you just keep the mouse button down and return to the last endpoint ???
(there's also a toggle shortcut key, A, from memory?)

Another diff between OnS and SW: the latter permits box (window) selection of arc and circle centerpoints, and line endpoints, does it not? This makes it less fussy applying a coincident constraint, say between the arc centre and the vertical line at the end of my animation;
By dragging right to left a quick, roughly positioned mouse-swipe selects both entities.

andrew_troup

Where the SW tangent / line toggling really comes into its own, I reckon, is when modelling (say) roll-formed sheetmetal profiles, with DOZENS of contiguous lines and arcs, often with individual radius values, and frequently anchored/snapped, during lining out,  by their tangency points rather than their virtual sharp intersections. (So that "Fillet" is not an advantageous strategy)

Another great feature in SW in this connection is selective addition of constraints, so that (for instance) if you import a roll formed profile which is accurate, you can add with one click ALL the tangency constraints and/or horizontal/vertical constraints. However that is hardly core functionality, although nice-to-have in the fullness of time/

shashank_aarya

As one of the workaround we can use slot option which creates tangent arcs. We can remove unwanted arcs afterwards.