Friday, February 10, 2012

Grips Location - Reference Planes vs Lines

When you apply an instance parameter to a strong/weak reference plane you'll get grips that let you alter the element directly in the view. When you do this to a reference line you get them too. There is a difference between the two Reference types in how they affect the grips though. Here's a pair of "desk" families. Compare the two forms in the image below, look carefully at where the grips are located in this one.


If you build the "bones" with Reference Lines and limit them to the size of the geometry they are meant to constrain you can define where the grips are displayed with much more control.


Don't worry, be "Grippy"!

6 comments:

Mark said...

Thanks for this tip Steve, I was just wondering about this the other day.
I am thinking that you meant to say in "Reference Lines" in the line about building the "bones"?

Steve said...

Yes that's what I meant, changed it to read correctly. I mix those two up both writing and saying all the time. It's hard :(

Joe Stott said...

Great Post Steve, this has bugged me for ages (using ref planes).. Will be Ref lines for me from now on.

BD Mackey Consulting said...

I am upset that the factory added them to weak references. I liked the old way of Strong or Names refplanes only.... Just my $.02 worth

Darren Snook said...

Steve
I wholeheartedly agree this is a much more elegant method of having drag handles in families and one I frequently employ. One thing to point out however is that there is a subtle difference between the two in a project when you insert the family into a view. If you switch off reference planes and reference lines under visibility graphics, a family that uses reference lines in this way will result in the handles being switched off. A family that uses reference plane handles will be unaffected by the visibility state. There may actually be some benefit to this functionality, but I thought I'd flag this up for others to avoid the head scratching I went through when the issue arose

Graham Brasic said...

Thanks Darren!! I couldn't figure out why my shape handles weren't appearing... Reference Lines were VG-ed off.