Picking Points To Define A Projection Plane Or Line

When using the Project to a Plane or Project to a Line modes, you can pick positions in the Graphics window to define points.

This feature provides a quick and intuitive way of defining a plane or line.

To begin a pick operation, click one of the Pick buttons in the Project Vertices in-place dialog. You can then pick vertices, edges, or faces in the Graphics window. Picking a vertex uses the exact position of the vertex. Picking an edge uses the selected position along the direction of the edge and picking a face uses the selected position on the surface of the face. The Output window reports whether a face, edge, or vertex has been selected and the coordinates relative to the global coordinate system.

When a pick is made, the coordinates of the point are added to the appropriate fields in the Project Vertices in-place dialog. You can manually change the coordinates of the point after picking to fine-tune its position. These coordinates are relative to the current coordinate system. Therefore, changing the coordinate system relocates the point to a position relative to the new coordinate system. The point is represented in the Graphics window with a color-coded sphere, which automatically updates when the point position changes.

To cancel the pick operation, press Esc on the keyboard, or click in the white space in the Graphics window.

This section provides the following examples:

  • Projecting to a plane defined by picking three points
  • Projecting to a line defined by picking end points

Picking Three Points to Define a Plane

This example illustrates picking three points to define a plane, in order to project a group of vertices to a surface.

  1. First, select the required vertices using the Selection Controls, before activating the Project Vertices tool.


  2. Define a plane by picking points on the required surface in the Graphics window.
    In this example, three vertices are selected, with the selection of Plane Point #3 shown below:

    The coordinates of each point are reported in the Project Vertices in-place dialog:

  3. Clicking Project Vertices projects the selected vertices to the user-defined plane.


Picking End Points to Define a Line

The following example illustrates picking end points to define a line, in order to project a group of vertices the line.

  1. Select the required vertices using the Selection Controls, before activating the Project Vertices tool.


  2. Define a line by picking the end points in the Graphics window.
    In this example, two vertices are selected:

    The coordinates of each point are reported in the Project Vertices in-place dialog:

  3. Clicking Project Vertices projects the selected vertices to the user-defined line.