About Auto-Constraining a Group of Elements

Using the Reference elements option you can select references to detect possible constraints between these references and the elements selected. When using Auto-constraint, reference is considered as chained or stacked.

This page discusses:

Reference Elements
Constraint Modes: Chained and Stacked

Reference Elements

The Reference elements option allows you to select references to detect possible constraints between these references and the elements selected.

Once the profile is fully constrained, it is displayed in green.

Note: The colors of the constraints are customizable. You can customize them from Me

> Preferences > Parameters and Measure > Constraints and Dimensions tab. See User Preferences User's Guide : General : Parameters and Measure : Constraints and Dimensions.

Constraint Modes: Chained and Stacked

When using Auto-constraint, there are two modes two constraint modes:

Chained Mode

In this mode, the element you explicitly select as the reference is not an absolute reference, which means that this element is used only once, just to compute the first constraint. Then, the system reuses the constrained element as a reference in turn, to compute the next constraint and so on.

In the following example, V axis is used as the first reference and it is used just once. You can notice that the other two offsets (70 and 50) are computed in relation to the lines. The picture shows them in :

Stacked Mode

In this mode, the reference is an absolute reference for all the constraints that will be detected.

In the following example, because V axis is set as the absolute reference, all offset constraints requiring a reference element are computed in relation to V. The picture shows them in :