Sketcher ConstrainCoincident

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Revision as of 10:37, 7 January 2017 by FuzzyBot (talk | contribs) (Importing a new version from external source)

Constraint PointOnPoint

Menu location
Sketch → Sketcher constraints → Constrain coincident
Workbenches
Sketcher, PartDesign
Default shortcut
None
Introduced in version
-
See also
Constraint Lock, Constraint Point onto Object


Description

Create a coincident constraint on the selected item

This constraint tool takes two points as its argument and serves to make the two points coincident. (Meaning to make them as-one-point).

In practical terms this constraint tool is useful when there is a break in a profile for example - where two lines end near each other and need to be joined - a coincident constraint on their end-points will close the gap.

How to Use

As stated above, this tool takes two arguments - both are points.

  1. Firstly it is necessary to highlight two distinct points. (Note this will not work if, for example, you attempt to select the start and end point of the same line).
  2. Highlighting of a drawing item is achieved by moving the mouse over the item and clicking the left-mouse-button.
  3. A highlighted item will change colour to green.
  4. Subsequent items can be highlighted by repeating the above procedure(s) NOTE: There is no-need to hold-down any special key like Ctrl to achieve multiple item selection in a drawing.
  5. Once you have two points highlighted, left-clicking on the 'PointOnPoint' constraint will cause the two points to become coincident and be replaced by a single point.

NOTE: In order to make two points coincident, FreeCAD must necessarily move one, or both, of the original points.

Scripting

The constraint can be created from macros and from the python console by using the following command:

Sketch.addConstraint(Sketcher.Constraint('Coincident',LineFixed,PointOfLineFixed,LineMoving,PointOfLineMoving))

where :

  • Sketch is a sketch object
  • LineFixed is the number of the line, that will not move by applying the constraint
  • PointOfLineFixed is the number of the vertex of the line LineFixed that has to fulfilled the constraint
  • LineMoving is the number of the line, that will move by applying the constraint
  • PointOfLineMoving is the number of the line LineMoving, that has to fulfilled the constraint

The main issue by using this function is to identify correctly the line number and the vertex number of the lines you want to process.

Let us take an example to explain the method to identify correctly the line number and vertex number. Identifying the numbering of a line.

I have drawn three lines as shown in figure 1.

TO BE CONTINUED...