Inventor Tips: Start your sketch on the right plane.

October 2009 Paul Munford
2 Comments
Inventor Tutorials

When you create a new part file Inventor will automatically create a sketch on the XY plane.

Your geometry will be drawn on the XY plane and extrusions will be added in the Z direction. You can save time when you come to create your assemblies by making sure that your part is correctly orientated at this stage.

Different Strokes

To an Engineer the XY Plane is the paper plane. All features in the Z direction are coming out toward you. To an Architect the XY plane is the floor plan. Features in the Z direction are heading up.

If the default sketch isn’t on the plane you were hoping for – you can delete the default sketch (sketch1) and create a new sketch on your preferred plane, or right click on ‘sketch1’ and choose ‘Redefine’ to change its plane.

Autodesk Inventor - create the initial sketch on the correct plane

 

Changing the Default settings

You can change the default settings for initial sketch creation in the application options:

Tools>Application options> Part Tab

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