Referencing entities that are external to your profile is a very common and important action when creating profiles.
There are three ways to reference external entities:
To be able to select 2D or 3D entities not on the Work Plane and have those reference positions projected onto the Work Plane, you must have the mouse input set to Projected onto Work Plane (select the corresponding button, you can also set it in the
Mouse Input area of the
Input category of the
System Options).
These reference points will be projected perpendicularly to the Work Plane as you create your profile geometry but will not be locked to these points.
In the case below you could project points onto the Work Plane from the base of a tapered solid.
To select external reference points, after the initial profile has been created, you can use constraints likeCoincidence, Tangency and so on. The Mouse Input setting (shown above) does not affect these commands.
In the case below, a rectangle is freehand sketched first and then two coincident constraints are added.
In addition, you can project external entities onto the profile plane when you use, in the profile environment, the Curve on Edge command.
When projecting external entities onto the Work Plane, you must be careful of the relative angle of the external entity. Remember that external geometry is projected perpendicularly to the Work Plane!