Create plane and view it normal to....

After clicking "Normal To", hold the shift button down and press the left or up arrow button (whichever is appropriate) twice. This will put it in the correct orientation. I don't know of a way to make it go to this orientation automatically. It somehow determines the automatic orientation based on how your default orientations (top, front, right) are setup.

Shift+arrow key rotates 90 degrees in the direction of the arrow. Do this twice and you're looking at the model from the opposite side. You can also use variations on this if you are looking at the model upside-down.

Thanks guys, this is great, I should have asked a long time ago! ohh well, I learned something new today! Thanks again.

Larry,

As an alternative, select your reference plane, then click TWICE on the "Normal to" icon located on the "Standard Views" toolbar.

This also allows you to flip the view orientation normal to conical and cylindrical face selections.

Excerpt from SolidWorks Help:

Normal To. Select a cylindrical or conical face, or any feature created with a single sketch to display the model in normal to view. Click Normal To twice to flip the model 180°.

Hope this helps.

John

Did you know you can also set the orientation by Ctrl & selecting a perpendicular face as a second selection. This will put you normal to the first selected face and the second face will point toward the top of the screene.

Corey

Kind of hard to do on the initial plane, though. :-))

WT

Normally you wouldn't really need it on the initial plane but when working later in the model there are times that you feel you are drawing at an angle or something and this can help feel you are working at the "right" angle.

Not really what Larry is asking, but you can also click the face you want to be normal to, then ctrl click a face you want rotated on top, then hit normal to.

matt

"Larry Jedik" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mygate.mailgate.org:

John,

Duh! As long as I have been using SW, I never knew that you could do that. Just goes to show what reading this newsgroup is good for....

Seth

Don't be too hard on yourself. This capability must be new in 2004. In 2003, clicking twice on a reference plane achieves nothing, and selecting a cylindrical or conical face, or any feature, you get "Please select a planar face"

And here was I hoping this was something I'd missed, too.....