Basic question, but this noob is stumped.

[phantomcow2]

I am trying to do some of the tutorials online, in hopes of familiarizing myself with Solidworks for school. Well, one thing that has consistently been annoying is drawing a circle co centric with the endpoint of a line. So if you drew a line across the diameter of this 2d circle, that line would be perpendicular to another line whose end point is the center of the circle. Included is an image of what I mean. See how the circle is along hte line, I need to sort of "rotate" that circle 90 degrees. How do I go about this? I did it once, but could not figure out how!

[automizer]

the best way I have found to do this is to draw the circle at the end point then with the four black dots around the outside of the circle add a relation to the line and one fo the dots. It will then rotate on the end point to give the angle your after

[keebler303]

if I am understanding you correctly, you want the circle perpendicular to the line right? If this is what you are looking for you can add a new plane which is perpendicular to the line and at that point. Its features, reference geometry, plane. Then just draw the circle on that plane and you are good to go.

Hope this is what you want to do

Matt

[phantomcow2]

Thanks for the replies. I actually went into 3d sketch and it worked. But, modeling a stepper motor for practice, inserting a new plane was useful as well

[JerryFlyGuy]

You could do that in a 3d sketch, however it is good to remember only to make your sketch's as complex as the need to be and no more. The proper way to draw a circle perpendicular to that line would be to close the sketch and select insert/plane then select the line [near its endpoint] and select 'normal to curve' in this case the 'curve' is a line, but the end result is the same. The plane is located on the end of the line. The second way to insert and locate the plane would be to select insert/plane and then find which plane is parrallel to the one you 'want' and select it along with the end point of your line. This will give you a plane that is located on the end point of the line. You would then input a sketch on this plane and draw the circle with the center located on the endpoint of the line. The circle center could also be linked to the line with a 'Pierce' constraint.

The different ways to draw the sketch are driven by what you want to do with the sketch. I shy away from 3d sketch's where I can because they give limited use geometry. [Using them for extrudes or cuts etc.. is pretty difficult] They are difficult to constrain in a usable manner. If you can sketch something and do it on two planes and be done, it is the prefered way to do it.
If you do stay away from 3d sketch's, then remember that you can only draw on one plane at a time. And for sketch geometry which is not planer, you'll need additional planes for the non-planer sketch's.



HTH
Jerry