Learn the process of creating width planes in a 3D design setting, beginning with an assessment of footer planks and their uniqueness. The guide further details how to create a plane, select a face, create a fully defined blue plane, and identify a width plane.
Key Insights
- The first step in creating a width plane involves assessing footer planks for their uniqueness, with unique planks colored green.
- Creating a plane entails going to the features tab in the command manager, selecting reference geometry and plane, and then picking a face.
- Width planes, which are typically the most created type of plane, are often used in designing symmetrical structures. They are fully defined blue planes that are created in the center of two selected faces.
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Hello, in this video we're going to create width planes for the very first time. Before we get started let's take a look at our footer planks here and assess whether or not they are unique because if they are unique we want to make sure they get colored green. Looking at this one it's made from the narrow plank but if you look above that inside framing piece is also made from the narrow plank and they are the exact same width because they go from beam to beam.
Let's take a look at this one too narrow plank and here's another narrow plank that goes beam to beam. Here's a narrow plank and that's another narrow plank that goes from beam to beam and so on and so forth. We haven't actually created unique pieces.
We're glad they're there because they'll be used for future patterns but for right now nothing needs to be turned green so it's good to know. Let's go ahead and save our work if this is still open from our last video and let's create some width planes. So just like before to create a plane we go to the features tab in the command manager here at the top of the screen.
Go to reference geometry and select plane and instead of selecting three unique references in 3D space to create the plane let's just select a face first in which case go down to the small beam here and select this outside face and then for the next reference select its opposite face and you can see it's created a fully defined blue plane that is in the exact center of these two planes. That is a width plane. Let's go ahead and close that out.
Now the width plane happens to be the plane that I personally create more than any other type of plane and that's because I and like many of you as designers design things that are symmetrical and things that are symmetrical we can oftentimes create the sketch on a single width plane and extrude it in either direction equally and save ourself a lot of extra steps than having to do it in any other way. Let's go ahead and create two more width planes. We'll go to plane select this surface and this surface.
All right that's fully defined we know that because it's blue and then we'll create one more. Oh looks like it's referencing the old plane we don't want to do that we can see it here so let's go ahead and close out make sure to click outside of it. All right let's create a new plane using the reference geometry tab.
Select this surface and this surface. Great so now we have created three new planes all using the width plane technique. In the next video we're going to explore feature patterns for the first time and we're also going to complete all the main walls in preparation for our sub-assemblies.
