how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

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giant1114
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how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by giant1114 »

Hi, I'm new here. I have searched this forum and across the internet to try and find an answer and have had no luck. I am trying to link or connect or reference a sketch to another body. I am trying to do this so I don't have to do the math to figure the length of lines needed for one body to fit against another body but also so that I know the bodies are touching and I don't have even the smallest gap. Its been about a year since I last used freecad and I seem to remember the "link to external geometry" tool allowing me to select geometry from another body so I could "connect" lines of a sketch to that geometry but it isn't working now. I have also tried to use the shapebinder tool and still no luck.

below is a screenshot
Screenshot 2021-08-01 183408.png
Screenshot 2021-08-01 183408.png (60.82 KiB) Viewed 1375 times
I need that line to connect at the vertex at the start of that fillet then another line to connect to the top left inside corner from the former vertex and back to the origin to create a brace.

OS: Windows 10 Version 2009
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papyblaise
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by papyblaise »

In PartDesign this is not possible, but there is a workaround:
you do a sketch with the Sketcher workshop where you can use the external references, then you drag / paste this sketch into a new Body
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Forthman
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by Forthman »

why didn't it work with ShapeBinder?
drmacro
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by drmacro »

Seems to me this is the exact use case for the ShapeBinder in PartDesign...

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
LHC
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by LHC »

Man, that's a huge emoji :lol:
drmacro
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by drmacro »

Normal here...maybe fixing the video links messed up the image sizes...again.
emoji.png
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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
LHC
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by LHC »

Yea it's massive on my tablet here. Pretty impressive looking though ! My first thought was " Mac really wants to hammer his point home" haha

Sorry for the hijack !
chrisb
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by chrisb »

LHC wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:12 pm Man, that's a huge emoji :lol:
The emojis still are huge when using the FreeCAD theme; it's ok in prosilver. This has to be fixed in the css file. I have made a proposal, but it is not implemented yet.
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freedman
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by freedman »

To the OP. You can use a shapebinder. If you set the shapebinder to wireframe and then rotate it slightly off axis you can get access to the lines you want and get external geo. You can rotate a Sketch off axis by Alt + Left mouse button.
chrisb
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Re: how to connect or refer a sketch to the geometry of another body

Post by chrisb »

The most frequent error with ShapeBinders is, that their source is still visible and then you cannot select them. I recommend to make everything invisible except the ShapeBinder..
A Sketcher Lecture with in-depth information is available in English, auf Deutsch, en français, en español.
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