2D sketch design – Best practices

Successful sketch design underpins the entire design. It is the foundation of nearly everything you do in CAD, so reviewing best practices and techniques, even at an advanced level, is worthwhile. We will now begin to focus on some of the important theory behind this before embarking on the recipes.

Here are the best practices you should follow when creating sketches in Inventor.

Start at the origin

Start your initial sketch from the origin or, if not possible, create a dimension from one sketch entity to the origin. In any new Inventor file, the only point of reference that is known to Inventor is the origin. By creating your sketch using the origin, you will need to give Inventor less information about your sketch, as it is already working from a known point in time and space.

In Figure 1.4, two identical sketches are shown. The right sketch was defined from the origin, while the left was dimensioned to the origin:

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