Snaps - a pain in the arse. Help?

Hi. 3D drawing. Putting a part, made up of several components together of various Z heights. Sometimes I just want to draw an outline of a part inside the whole drawing. Only, when I do this, I find the lines are all over the place in the Z direction. So they look flat, but turn the drawing around, there are curves going upwards, downwards just everywhere! I have tried going to 2D mode, tried showing the grid, looked at snap settings. To no avail.

Also. Inside the 3D drawing, if I want to move a component across the drawing, unless I use the arrows on the gripper, I seem to have no control which direction it moves on the vertical scale. Say I am looking at the top of my part. I want to move a piece a few mm in the Y direction. I do this, but then find it has dropped halfway through the part in the Z direction. Thats an example.

Oh - often, "curves not planar" is a boom I come across.

I am wondering if there is a tutorial or setting I can suss to work out whats going wrong? Is there a way I can keep things flat on the screen?

I guess this will look like a rant. But I have no idea how to resolve, how to move parts around without needing to use the gripper. Normally I will measure how far I need to move a part, then engage the gripper in that direction.

You have a couple of options. You can select snap to "plane only" in snaps before you draw... or if you have already drawn things then select all your 2D lines with the align tool (select Centers Vertical) in top view and then go to a side view (like right view) and click on the "along x" (or along y) line. This will put everything on the same plane.

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Originally Posted by FastFarmer

or if you have already drawn things then select all your 2D lines with the align tool (select Centers Vertical) in top view and then go to a side view (like right view) and click on the "along x" (or along y) line. This will put everything on the same plane.

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Ok, so I just checked this and it will move everything to the plane, but it wont flatten the lines to the same plane. To flatten the lines you need to use Project Curve to Plane. Select XY plane, select all your lines, swap to side view and click on the plane along x or along y

Cheers.

select all your lines drawn and in the inspector window (data tab) change your z value (or add if not there) to 0 for start and end.

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Originally Posted by memphisjed

select all your lines drawn and in the inspector window (data tab) change your z value (or add if not there) to 0 for start and end.

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Works well. Cheers