Cubify Invent - Tutorial #4: Planar Surfaces and Tangent Planes

One of the problems that we face when creating tutorials as we learn a product is that we can miss some things resulting in misleading information.  I'm guilty of doing just that.

I had previous thought that we were limited to creating our 2D sketches on planes.  Happily, that turns out not to be the case.  We can also create 2D sketches on any flat surface of a 3D object.  These flat surfaces are called PLANAR SURFACES.

In this tutorial we continue exploring the surfaces on which we can sketch by looking at planar surfaces and TANGENT PLANES.  A tangent plane is one that is created tangent to the surface of a curved surface.  Typically, this would be the wall of a cylinder.

As you may have seen in the video, once we select a plane, planar surface or tangent plane on which to sketch, we can begin sketching beyond the visible boundaries that we see,  For instance, we might chose a very tiny planar surface.  Yet, we can draw well outside the boundaries of that selected planar surface.  And, the same is true of a tangent plane.  We are not limited to simply drawing within the limits of the curved surface with which that surface was created.

The more I work with Cubify Invent, the more I see its potential.  I'm beginning to see that once the learning curve has been put behind us, this is not only going to be a powerful tool; but, an easy and quick tool.  That is a good feeling to have to anyone interested in 3D printing moving into the mainstream.  Nice.