How to move a sketch object point to a typed position

robert_kluttz

For line endpoints or arc or circle centers, how do I move those to a precise TYPED location in my sketches. Nothing will let me type them. I can see the coordinates in the bottom right but it won't let me edit those as either absolute coordinates and I can find no way to use them relative to any other point either. Is there no relative position feature like in Autocad... i.e. move a point to a position relative to another point without having to calculate absolute positions? Nothing I can find will let me move a point once it is placed other than dragging it to an arbitrary location which is frustratingly imprecise.

It really seems like once a point is in you should be able to edit that point using 2 different versions of location, either absolute to origin or relative to another defined point. I can't find any way to get either one to work or how to do it.

For example... If I have a rectangle with corners a 0,0 and 48,48 and I want to create a line that I will use to chop off a corner of the rectangle and I wanted that line to go from 0,20.125 to 20.125,0

For 2nd example, the same thing but for a rectangle the same size that does not start at the origin point. How would I do the same thing relative to the bottom left corner?

This seems like the most basic functionality that I can't find.

S1mon

Onshape is very much not Autocad. The whole point of a parametric CAD tool is to dimension and add constraints to sketches and features in a way that they can be updated intelligently later by changing a few dimensions. This does rely on capturing the design intent in a useful way and anticipating the types of changes that you might want to do.

Normally you type in "locations" by adding dimensions to sketch entities. That said, within the sketcher there is a transform tool that will move things by numeric amounts. You can change the reference point of those moves in order to do many of the things that you're looking for.

I would highly recommend that you go through some of the free training in the Learning Center:
https://learn.onshape.com/courses/fundamentals-sketching
https://learn.onshape.com/learn/learning-path/onshape-fundamentals-cad

robert_kluttz

I do understand the parametric CAD paradigm, but all drawings need to have a starting or anchor point, and at least for the INITIAL drawing before constraints are set, it is so much easier to use coordinate based drawing to accurately get that initial build done. Arbitrary clicks of the mouse to do the initial drawing are so imprecise, especially when you are reverse engineering something and only know a couple of the critical measurements. Then constraints can be added after the fact. But the biggest one is the ability to place objects relative to other objects or points. Many times this is a very very simple calculation where the same placement using purely dimensions or relating everything back to origin can be a fairly complex and time consuming set of calculations.

S1mon

Perhaps you can share some screenshots of sketches and describe in more details what you’re trying to do? Whenever I touch anything remotely like Autocad, I feel like a fish out of water, so I suspect that you’re feeling similar. Clearly a ton of professional work gets done in both systems, so it’s a matter of getting used to the tools and the workflow.