How to move a sketch. Not transform, just MOVE it

alex_k506 · June 19

Hi,

3-day old noob here and having the hardest time with the simplest things.

I designed a cabinet door with a handle that I want to mirror. Of course, being at it for only 3 days, I placed the sketch for the door and handle at an arbitrary distance from the Right plane (let's say it's 2" for the sake of argument).

I need to mirror this door. So far so good, except the reflection is 4" apart from the original.

Being so new to this, I know I'm going to have to move a ton of things around, and if I use the Mirror or transform tools I'm going to end up with a gazillion entries for transformations which will only uselessly clutter the features list.

How can I just grab this door and JUST MOVE IT a specific distance without having to create a transform?????

Thanks!

nick_papageorge073 · June 20

Go inside the sketch for the door and change the dimensions to the Right plane, to the number you would like.

Jed_Yeiser · June 20

@alex_k506 do you have a document you could share? How are you envisioning 'Moving' as distinct from a Transform? There is no way to move bodies/faces without either A: editing the locations of the original sketch planes or B: operating on the bodies with a transform - and that's a good thing! This is not the case for assemblies where bodies can exist, unconstrained, in space. Unfortunately, mirror part/body in an assembly is not (yet) an option, though there are improvement requests for this functionality.

Is the Plane or Mate Connector you're mirroring around parallel to the original sketch plane? A transform can accept multiple bodies as input, so you will only need one transform to move both the door and the handle (and hinges, kick-stop, door frame, etc if those are needed).

alex_k506 · June 20

Hi Nick, hi Jed,

I ended up doing something similar to Nick's suggestion, although more painfully before seeing how constraints would save me, involving painstakingly moving things a bit with the mouse, saving the sketch and measuring (because there's no way to place guides on the "space" like one would in a 2-d program such as Photoshop, Gimp, or Illustrator), and repeating until I got the original door where I wanted.

I can see the documentary value of transforms, as well as their value when drafting a complex design that might require further reviews and adjustments before manufacturing the thing that's being designed, but being new to this paradigm, turning every one of my mistake corrections into its own entity (a Transformation) only clutters everything and doesn't help; quite the opposite.

Anyway, if you're curious and can stomach it without gagging, here's the link to the document I'm working on:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/0a9efaaeabe280df805875cd/w/422e86029d60cbd8057c2882/e/1ef14f9a8c72418776542a27?renderMode=0&uiState=667472c36bc34f7a846b03ef

I'm sure it'll horrify a few people, but so far I'm getting what I need out of the program. The main reason I'm not sketching things by hand is because I'm building a wall unit for my office and want to have the ability to move things around to experiment with functionality and looks. Otherwise, I'd be assembling cabinets by now.

I come from the 2-d world, with design experience going back some 40 years, all the way to Corel Draw, Ventura, Pagemaker, Illustrator, etc., which followed paradigms similar to one-another, and as a result, shared ways to do certain tasks. I remember giving AutoCAD a shot a looooooong time ago and being utterly lost, because it was so different, and I have a feeling, given how that's what current CAD software can trace it's lineage to, that that's what I'm running into here.

As a novice, and having learned that some things are done entirely differently in this "world," I am undergoing a bit of paralysis as I'm pondering some of the decisions I make for hours while I try to anticipate what will come back to bite me two days later.

Thank you both!

Alex

john_lopez363 · June 20

@alex_k506
Three words.... Take The Training!

Go through the Fundamentals course series, then the Intermediate and then Advanced. Go in order. Once you're done you will have a solid grasp on how to use OnShape.

rick_randall · June 20

alex_k506

When I was starting out, I was taught that there is no right way or wrong way to model - only slow ways or fast ways. If your model ends up correct it doesn't matter how you got there.There always seems to be more than one way to do things - and the "experts" seem to know the quickest way to get there (the least amount of steps). With practice you to will learn these things, but your work looks OK to me.

Keep at it - you'll get there

_anton · June 20

@rick_randall I'd argue that correctness can mean not just the result but also maintainability. Good modeling practices can cut an order of magnitude off the work you have to do downstream, if you need to rework an earlier design decision.

Of course, those good practices take time and experience to learn. I do this involuntary twitch thing when I look at anything I modeled more than a couple of years ago.

S1mon · June 20

To answer the question in the title, keep in mind that there is a sketch transform tool and there is a separate transform feature. They are very very different things. A sketch transform is not parametric. It is a direct edit on some sketch entities - basically moving them once, but with no parametric history other than undo/redo in the sketch. A transform feature will take geometry and move it a specified amount and if you go back and change the shape of a part that the transform feature operates on, it will still move the specified amount.

Quickly skimming through your document, the biggest issue I see is that your part studios and your assemblies don't seem to pay any attention to where the origin is. This will end up causing you a lot of pain. In general, you want all the entities in a sketch to be black (fully constrained) - not blue (unconstrained). The default sketch planes are useful references for mirroring and other operations. You typically want the origin of a part studio to make sense in the context of the parts you are creating. You also don't want the sketches to be able to float around unintentionally.

Similarly, assemblies should have at least one part mated to the origin, or fixed. Then the other parts can be mated to each other, or the origin, or grouped. You only want parts to move that would move in real life, like you might want your cabinet doors to hinge, or drawers to slide.

I would strongly echo the idea that taking a little time to do the training would be helpful. The 2D programs you mention all only care so much about where you're working on a 2D layout. There is an origin and a sense of page boundaries, but it doesn't have the same essential function as it does in most mechanical CAD programs.

alex_k506 · June 21

Hi EVERYBODY!

"Angry and frustrated" (and I'm being rather euphemistic here) doesn't begin to describe how I was feeling when I wrote my first post above.

I'm humbled and grateful for all the input I've gotten. I really didn't expect more than a cursory look (if at all) at my "work," but y'all didn't just look, you dived well into it!

For my part, always trying to recall what it is to be a novice, I'm adhering to the sandcastle philosophy, so I'll be redoing this thing from scratch before going to the lumberyard with a cut list.

Again, thank you all for your input and advice.

Alex

nick_papageorge073 · June 21

I just saw your document. You did all that in 3 days of touching Onshape?! Are you pulling our legs? Studios, folders, assemblies, decals, and a nice looking finished model.

If you did that in 3 days without training, you'll be a pro after training. Happy modeling.

alex_k506 · June 21

Hi,

Thank you!

Well, I've been using computers since I was 14 and started working with and on them at 17, and one of my college classes was mechanical drafting, so it doesn't take me a whole lot to "settle" into new software

(I guess this would be Malcolm Gladwell's proverbial 10,000 hours of flight at work).

I started out with this 5-part series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWnsHpDlQE , which shows how to build one part, then this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oidjKVmza98 , which goes through the process of an entire cabinet, and then this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ODfHByLc0&t=594s which has some really interesting tricks, even though I didn't use any of them.

That was all great, but I still had no idea of how to put it all together, so I started looking for "full kitchen design onshape" and landed on this discussion: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/11561/kitchen-cabinets which has a link to a REALLY good document done right.

Of course, it's mostly Chinese to me, with the use of variables and what not, but it was very fortunate that this was the document I landed on, because I was able to infer a bit about the workflow that presumably should apply to what I'm trying to create.

I think that last bit was incredibly important.

Unfortunately, this is a one-shot project and I happen to be up against the clock, since I took time off from work to work on this and catch up with a bunch of other things. Otherwise, I'd be REALLY diving in, because despite the problems I've had here and there, I'm enjoying this immensely.

OK. Off to start version 3 from scratch now. Hopefully it'll be the last one before I gather the list of materials and measurements and head off to the lumberyard to have them cut the plywood.

Alex

How to move a sketch. Not transform, just MOVE it

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