How does one rotate a part that was designed on the wrong plane

[flyforever]

I am going through the atomic3d demo tutorial and, during an assembly, I realized that one part had been designed on the wrong plane. I don't want to use the "mates" to change the rotation, so I'd like to know if there's another way. Ideally, I'd like to make the change in the part file. thanks. I am enjoying A3D so far.

 

[simonb65]

Short answer is you can't. You would need to create your part again starting on the correct plane. Rotating a part in an assembly to orient it and constrain it to another part is pretty normal practice, so you will need to use mates, aligns, etc to tie the assembled parts together, so just use them to drive the orientation ... as this is what assembly constrains are actually for!

 

[flyforever]

Short answer is you can't. You would need to create your part again starting on the correct plane. Rotating a part in an assembly to orient it and constrain it to another part is pretty normal practice, so you will need to use mates, aligns, etc to tie the assembled parts together, so just use them to drive the orientation ... as this is what assembly constrains are actually for![/QUOTE
thanks for the quick reply.

 

[OTE_TheMissile]

As Simon said, in practice, picking a reference plane to start on is mostly down to personal preference; all you're really determining is which way you're going to be "normally" looking at the part. It has little to no affect on the finished model when you go to incorporate it into an Assembly (although it can be slightly annoying to have to reorient several copies of the same part during constraining, but you learn to think about that in advance with experience), and you're free to reorient it however you like when you go to create the first view in a Drawing.

If you're following a tutorial that's specifically asking you to "select XY plane" or "align to Z axis", then yeah it's probably going to get a little confusing. But really, you should be paying more attention to how the reference geometry they're asking you to select relates to the Part you're making, rather than just what it's called. As long as the geometry you're referencing suits the purpose, that's the only thing that's important.

 

[bigseb]

Three ways to do this:

1) There is NO SUCH THING AS THE WRONG PLANE. You can reorient in the assembly how ever you like.

2) Ideally you should create a plane for every sketch. And if you make subsequent planes relative to the first then hey presto, problem solved.

3) You can boolean unite your part into a new empty part and reorient as you like. You now have a new part that is oriented 'correctly'.

Planning.