Tips on the Work Plane appearance

The Work Plane can be displayed in several different ways, depending on the kind of design you are working on (for example: solids rather than advanced surfacing).

You can have the Work Plane hidden or visible whenever you want: use View Work Plane to hide/unhide the Work Plane, or alternatively, press W on the keyboard.

Depending on the specific settings made in the Reference Systems- Appearance category of the System Options, you can customize the way the Work Plane is displayed in accordance with your needs.

• You may want to hide the Z-axis, by clearing the Z axis check box:
  
  

  Z axis checked	Z axis cleared

  
  
• When the Work plane is linked to an entity, you will see a lock marker at its origin:
  
  
  
  
• By selecting the Axis thickness check box you can display the coordinates axes with an increased width:
  
  

  Axis thickness checked	Axis thickness cleared

  
  
• You can display the Work Plane as only the XY-Plane or as a set of three coordinate planes by selecting one of the radio button is the Planes area:
  
  

  XY plane selected	3 planes selected

  
  
• You may need to control the size of the Work Plane: just click on it. You can then drag the green handles displayed at its corners to set its size.
  
  
  
  The green handle for resizing are displayed only if the Resize on editing check box is selected.
  
  
• The Work Plane is regarded as an ordinary entity: it will be scaled, moved and rotated along with the scene also during dynamic zooming/panning/rotating. The options in the Size area control the way the Work Plane axes are displayed when such operations are performed. If the Document units radio button is selected, the size of the Work Plane axes will change proportionally with the scene; if the Millimeters on screen radio button is selected, the size of the axes will remain unchanged.
  
  

The way you may want to display the Work Plane depends on the kind of modeling you are working at. For example, users that need to work on typical mechanical objects such as plates, holes and pins, usually may not need to display the Z direction; they just need to know where the XY plane is, which sketching plane is current, etc. On the other hand, an industrial designer dealing with complex 3D shapes made of surfaces may need to display the three axes.

Related Topics

• An Overview of Reference Systems