Select profile for Extrude?

Thanks Corey. I appreciate the reply, but I'm comfortable with everything you mentioned (i.e. defining view orientations - Front, Top, Right). The problem I have is - quoting your reply "once your views are on the right planes Hit rebuild and select the sketches you want to extrude." selecting the profile for the extrude. I can do it, but it means that I have to go around the profile and select each segment one at a time until I have selecting the entire closed profile.

I'm not sure what you mean by a region? but if it reduces the number of screen picks I have to do to identify my profile then great! I looked in help and didn't see it?

SR

You need to select the sketch first then hit extrude.

There are 2 extrude commands. One is on the 2d to 3d tool bar the other is on the Features tool bar.

The one on 2d to 3d if you select a line on your sketch and hit this button it will move the line you select into another sketch and extrude it. If you created your front and side sketches as I explained the lines that you selected for them will turn black and you will have a few sketches in the design tree to the right.

Sketch1 (Was origionally your imported drawing) Sketch2 (Should be your front sketch) Sketch3 (May be your right side sketch)

If you select sketch2 from the design tree and hit extrude it will extrude every line that you put into your front sketch.

Then you select sketch3 and hit cut-extrude flip side to cut and depending on complexity you should have your part.

If your part is more complex you can cut or extrude by region, it is at the bottom of the extrude dialogue.

The above can be done without hitting rebuild

If you do hit rebuild after creating Front and Side sketches and use the Extrude button on the feature manager you don't have to select from the design tree. Now you will be able to select a line that is in your sketch and the whole sketch will extrude.

(this is all assuming that you don't have overlapping regions and that your contours are closed. If you have overlapping regions use the regions feature of the extrude commands as described above

Clear as mud?? =)

Corey

o.k. Your detailed reply has helped me isolate the problem.

What I was doing was selecting the profile sketch by selecting each segment of the profile (not selecting the sketch from the tree). The reason I was doing this is because after defining the front, top and right sketchs using the 2d to 3D toolbar the planes are automatically offset from each. Therefore in order to extrude the profile with an offset from the plane it was defined on I was also selecting a point on an adjacent profile (for example I would select the front profile and closest point on the top sketch as the offset or starting point for the extrude). By doing this the extrude would begin offset from the sketch plane to where it needs to start. This procedure works find except you cannot select the sketch profile in the tree as per your directions "and" select a point on another sketch to account for the planes offset.

If you use your method you save time from not having to select each sketch profile segment, but do not account for the offset when extruding. A subsequent cut-extrude is then done to cut the offset out (flip side) followed by additional cuts etc.

Because my profiles are pretty complex I like your method better, but it would be nice to save the cut-extrude side to get around the offset. Not sure why they even offset these sketches anyway...

Something else I learned from you was after defining the front, top and right views - turning off sketch1 eliminates a lot of clutter.

Thanks, SR