Drawing in 3D

Hi,

Everything I draw in any view in 3D, gets projected on the plane z = 0. So, in other words, I can only draw horizontal lines in sideviews.

Regards

You need to orientate the ucs to move along another plane.

2009? Are you using the Ribbon? Click on the View tab and take a look at the UCS panel. The UCS can be manipulated there. Just one way to do it. There are others.

You are in a 3D workspace right?

Yeah, I use AutoCAD 2009 ... Tried what you said and got it working.

Thx

You're entirely welcomed. That's what we're here for.

Got a new problem ... When I define a new Z-axis to make a new UCS, when I want to move an endpoint of a line, I can see it change back to default UCS ...

So can't move in the direction I want

TIA

I think you may have a feature called the Dynamic UCS toggled on. Turn it off and see if that helps. Bottom of your screen. There's a button for it. When you hover over it you'll see this --> Allow/disallow Dynamic UCS. There are only two settings, on and off.

Nope...Didn't help

As soon as I click on an endpoint, the axis triade switches back to default one, when I release it, it switches back to the one I set.

Hopefully someone knows the answer

Try pressing F6 or SHIFT+Z while moving the pointer over a face. What happens?

It says ... but that seem to happen everytime I press F6... Don't know if I'm doing what you asked. So far I don't have single faces in 3D view, only 3D Solids and Lines. I'd like to move the endpoit of a line, snapping to another object.

If that doesn't work try setting the variable UCSDETECT to "0" if it is currently set to "1". Does that help?

Moving the endpoint of a simple line to another point? Do you mean stretch? Or are you physically moving the entire line. Oops. Time for me to go. It will be a stretch before I can return. Hang in there.

OK I'm back momentarily. Have you solved your problem or not?

I solved it by redrawing the line in 3D. I started with drawing 2 boxes on top op eachother with polyline, and giving the lower box depth. Then I wanted the bottomline of the upper box to be aligned with the upperline of the lower box. Moving both endpoints did not work. It always kept moving in the same plane, whatever the UCS was set to.

The left side of the attachment shows how I defined my Z-axis. Right side is how the UCS becomes when I try to move anything. When the upper box gets explode, it does work. Because then the UCS seems to be how I define it.

But i'll try what you've written previously, and let you know.

With the UCS situated normally I would have drawn one box using the polyline command so it is a single continuous line. Then I would have changed the orientation of the UCS so "Y" was pointing vertically. Next I would have copied the box in the "Y" direction the required distance. Done. You're making this harder than it has to be.

If you draw two boxes at different elevations then creating a temporary reference line off one of the boxes will help in aligning them.

Dynamic UCS can be a real pain. For starters, when you first start working in 3D the UCS orientation is a new skill which takes some practice to master. Second, well intentioned people will tell you things like "turn off Dynamic UCS" without telling you how to do it.

Ctrl+D

on the command line will do it. If you're like me, the Ribbon is nothing but a big waste of screen space so I use AutoCAD classic format and don't have the ribbon.

When I draw something in 3D and the UCS starts jumping around, I press Ctrl+D and that toggles it on or off as needed.

Koen;

I've seen some of your 3-D rendered designs of Formula One cars and I think they look fantastic! I like them to the point that I would like to buy them and pay you for drawing some of them up for me. I was wondering if you would be interested? If so, let me know, okay talk with you later.

Cheers...

-Mark