Inventor 2017 3D Sketch Enhancements

Inventor 2017 includes Design Enhancements so that you can design faster. This is no more apparent than the Inventor 2017 3D sketch environment, it has finally seen some loving. The updates are significant (and I mean it!) as the amount of time and effort required to build 3D sketches is greatly reduced.

Inventor 2017 3D Sketch Enhancements

In summary:

Use 3D Transform to quickly (and precisely) move and rotate geometry.
New constraint types for greater control.
Quickly add sketch geometry directly onto 3D faces.
Copy & Paster 3D sketch geometry directly within the same sketch

Draw Curves Directly on a Face

Using the new Curve on Face feature, you can create interpolation 3D splines directly on a part face. The workflow supports snapping to points (vertices) and edges while picking points.

To maintain its relation to the part face the resultant object does not provide the full suite of spline editing features. Via the right-click menu you can insert additional points, edit the position of existing points, work with the point handles, display the curvature, and use other tools.

Use the new On Face option to constrain selected lines, arcs, or splines to a planar face or selected points to a curved face.

3D Sketch Draw Tools

One of the few things that AutoCAD excelled at and Inventor lacked was using Ortho to quickly layout 3D lines. [Need to see an example? Take a look at how Autodesk Plant 3D uses ortho to its advantage for laying out pipe]. Well, no longer is this an AutoCAD only feature, as Inventor 2017 adds Ortho to the 3D Sketch environment,…. BOOM, that’s how its done.

Ortho is enabled from the right-click menu, the new status bar icon, or by pressing Ctrl+R (which I’ll consider switching to F8). And with the addition of Dynamic Dimensions (also in the status bar and right-click menu) you can quickly create fully constrained sketch geometry.

Use the space indicator glyph that follows you around as you are sketching, to sketch on a specific plane. Click the desired plane on the space indicator and you are restricted to only drawing in its planar directions. Press Shift+Space to toggle between the planes and parallel with the screen.

The following commands are added to the context menu:

Align to Plane
Orient Z
Orient to World
Snap Intersection

Inventor 2017 adds the 3D Transform feature to the 3D Sketch environment. Use this to freely or precisely move / rotate geometry within the 3D sketch. The 3D Transform triad can be reorientated to the World, the current View, or the Local coordinate system.