Hero image CADD Logo

Sketch Lines - Behold Their Power!

CADD MicrosystemsApril 26th, 2017

Have you ever wanted to create a floor and a ceiling with the same boundary....or copy a non-rectangular callout boundary between a plan and RCP view...or copy a shape from a project into a family....but have never been able to figure out how to? Fear not, for these three things and more can be done using sketch lines! Let's start one by one.

You've drawn a non-rectangular floor, and you need a ceiling to match it - this could be a finish floor in a particular room or a bulkhead that matches a pattern in the floor, etc. Edit the sketch of the ceiling, copy all the sketch lines to your clipboard, and then exit the sketch (you don't have to save it if you didn't make any changes). Now start the ceiling command and choose "ceiling by sketch". Go to Paste > Aligned to the current view, and voila, you have the same outline for the ceiling as for the floor, in the exact same place!

The same procedure works for copying the boundary of a callout from one view to another. I use this when doing enlarged plans and RCPs of the same area, to make sure that I get the exact same shape. This is great when you have a non-rectangular crop boundary, so you can't just tie it to a scope box.

Where this is really useful if is you want to create a family that needs to fit a particular geometry in your project and you don't want to make an in-place model, or you need to use it in more than one place, so it makes more sense to make it a loadable component family. You can start a sketch, any kind of sketch really (floor, ceiling, filled region) in your project file, copy those sketch lines to your clipboard, start an extrusion sketch in a family file, and paste them in. You don't have to save the original sketch in the project.

Hopefully, these little tips will increase your productivity and reduce some headaches!

Interested in learning more? We'd love to chat!

Contact us