Drawing out of plane

robot999

Having executed the following command,

RECTANG

(First point) 0,0,0
(Second point) 10,0,10

I get a line. And that makes sense, because I am looking at the edge of it.

But if I use the navigation view, I can see the OCS rotating, but all I see is a line. Why is this? Is that because all initial drawing is only on the x-y plane, so the only thing that is actually realized is the intersection of the result of the operation and the x-y plane?

Steven_g

The rectangle command draws a polyline, and a polyline can only be drawn on the current XY plane, so yes it ignores any Z value, there is nothing to stop you having the view and the drawing UCS set at different angles, but polylines will only ever use the X and Y components of points (even if you are using snap points).
If you look in the properties you will see that your polyline does actually have 4 vertices!

robot999

Thanks! That's a stranger explanation than I thought!

Steven_g

Why strange? maybe I didn't explain it very well . In fact looking back it's not 100% accurate. Some objects can only ever be drawn on the current plane, Hatch, and others only parallel to the current plane Polyline, the first point can be given a height (or takes it from a snap point) but the rest remains at that height.

robot999

I would say it's strange because I'm learning CAD right now.

Jason Bourhill

@robot999 said:
Having executed the following command,

RECTANG

(First point) 0,0,0
(Second point) 10,0,10

I get a line. And that makes sense, because I am looking at the edge of it.

You get a line because that is what you've described with your point entry.
First point is at 0,0,0
Second point is 10 in the x direction and 0 in the y. The 10 in the Z direction is ignored, because RECTANG is a 2D command, it can only draw on the current UCS plane.

If you are learning, then you could omit the z value for now to keep things simple. So to draw your rectangle.

RECTANG
0,0
10,10

You can find information on coordinate entry in HELP. There are also learning videos available on getting started with BricsCAD, see https://lessons.bricsys.com/courses.

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

robot999

Jason, this is great, I did not know about these courses earlier. I did find some videos, but not these. Thank you!