Creating an axis without creating a feature?

[Toybuilder]

I recently had a need to align the center of the extents of this green part to the center of the round part. I did this by creating a sketch on the green part, projecting the part's outline, and then making a circle defined by the three (fourth is redundant) points that defined the outer extremeties of the board, and then extruding that circle to make a cylinder that I can use to define the axis. I then suppressed that feature.

That axis was then aligned with the center axis of the grey cylinder.

Is there a better way to do things like this without having to create the fake feature that is later suppressed?

 

[idslk]

Create a circle as a reference line in the outline sketch of your green part:

create a 3d point at the center of the reference circle:




create an axis with point and plane:





There is now an "extra" feature created (the 3D-Point) but not an extra volume...
Can you go with this?

Regards
Stefan

 

[Toybuilder]

Oh wow. I was oblivious to the fact that there is a create point (and create axis) in the sketch context.

I've frequently used create-node; but for whatever reason, I missed the fact that there are create (reference) point and create (reference) axis actions. I had been attempting to use model context create point/axis actions which of course don't work.

I think I was confused because in my mind, nodes and reference sketch lines represent objects ("construction objects" within the sketch) while points and axes are more "definitional" and are parameters, not objects.

Thank you for reorienting my view of the situation. Your solution is exactly what I needed!