Learn/Drafting/2D Sketch Editor
Construction Geometry
At a glance
- Press X on selected entities to toggle construction mode
- Press X with nothing selected to draw all new entities as construction
- Renders dashed grey — excluded from solid generation entirely
- Use freely for layout lines, center marks, and reference geometry
Construction geometry is scaffolding: it renders as dashed grey lines, you can snap to it and constrain against it, but face detection skips it completely — so it never becomes part of an extruded profile no matter where it crosses your real geometry. Draw layout lines straight through the middle of a part without a second thought.
Toggling with X
Press X with entities selected to flip them to construction. The toggle is smart about mixed
selections: if anything selected is still regular geometry, everything becomes construction; if
the whole selection is already construction, everything flips back. Press X with nothing
selected to toggle construction mode — every entity you draw from then on is tagged as
construction until you toggle it off. The same switch lives in the sketch panel's Display section
as Construction (X), so you can see at a glance which mode you're in.
Working with it
Construction entities are ordinary lines, arcs, and circles otherwise — snapping targets them, dimensions can reference them, and constraints hold them in place. That makes them the right tool for bolt-circle layout (a construction circle with holes constrained onto it), mirror axes, and datum lines you measure from but never cut.
When the scaffolding has served its purpose, the Clean sub-tool deletes every construction entity in the sketch in one click — no hunting them down individually.