Working with reference plane properties

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We'll create a new family and set up our reference planes

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to do this. Let's select the file ribbon

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and on the file ribbon, we'll go to new

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and family.

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In this example here, we're going to go ahead and use generic model

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and click open

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by default. In the family editor, you'll notice that ref

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level is now active and we have our two reference planes.

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Once again, these are pinned and these define the origin by default.

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So here we might want to set up

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a parametric framework to make the insertion point static

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and have the family increase from that center point

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to do this. I'm going to need to create extra reference planes.

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Let's go ahead and select the create ribbon

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and on the create ribbon you'll see here, we have the reference plain.

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I'll select reference plane

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and you can see on the draw panel, we have two options

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line or pick lines.

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In this case here, I'm going to go ahead and use pick lines,

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I can set an offset in here. So here I'm going to set this 1 to 12 inches

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and notice here that when I hover my cursor over one of these reference planes.

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The offset is now previewed. I'm gonna have a reference plane off to the right here.

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Another one to the left,

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another one to the top and another one to the bottom.

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We now want to make sure that these reference planes remain equal

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to do this. We'll select the annotates ribbon

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and on the annotate ribbon, we can select the aligned dimension tool

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here.

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I'm going to place a simple align dimension across these three vertical planes

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and notice when I place them down, I have the option to make those equal.

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I'll do the same on the three horizontal planes.

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Again, place the dimensions down

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and make them equal.

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I'll now press escape to leave the dimension tool.

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And now when I select one of these reference planes on the side,

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as I drag my cursor,

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you can see those reference planes will now remain equal about

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the insertion point or the center point of our reference planes.

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So this is the fundamental skill that you'll need

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to set up the parametric framework of certain families.

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Another very important thing is to make sure that you name these reference planes,

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this will become very useful in our project environment.

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So for example, if I select this reference plane on the right hand side here,

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you'll notice here that we can click to name

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or I can set the name in the property's pad it.

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So here I might want to type in right face

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for example, here I might want to type in left face

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and this can be very, very useful when we have complex reference planes set up.

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And then what you'll notice here is if we just hop around our cursor over this,

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we'll get a tool tip, displaying the reference plane name.

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And as you've already seen that would also be exposed in the

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project environment when we want a dimension or align to these planes.