Learn/Drafting/2D Sketch Editor
Sketch Boolean & Bridge
At a glance
- Cut, Join, and Intersect closed sketch profiles — true arcs restored in the result
- Bridge welds islands together or slots through material with one click
- Auto Union/Cut: hover open space to add a tab, hover material to cut a slot
- Shift + wheel rotates the bridge, pausing at 0/90/180/270
- Space + wheel scales it proportionally; Shift + < / > steps 5°
- Width, Height, and Rotation take unit-aware expressions and are remembered
Closed profiles in a sketch can be combined directly — no round-trip through another workspace. Both tools run on the same fast geometry engine as plasma toolpaths, and both hand back true arcs: results are re-fit to clean arc geometry, not left as chains of tiny line segments.
Boolean
Select two or more closed profiles and pick Cut, Join, or Intersect. Cut subtracts the later selections from the first, Join welds everything into one outline, Intersect keeps only the overlap. Islands are handled correctly — a profile with holes stays a profile with holes.
Bridge
Bridge places a small rectangle that joins or slots closed contours — the classic use is keeping the center of a letter attached before cutting, or tying two separate outlines into one part.
Move the cursor and the rectangle follows with a live preview: green when the click will work, red when it won't, with a floating label telling you exactly what you're about to get:
- Union — the bridge center is over open space between contours: clicking welds them together with a solid tab of material.
- Cut — the bridge center is inside material: clicking slots straight through, splitting the outline where the rectangle crosses it.
Size and angle are all on-canvas, matching the Design workspace's Bridge:
- Shift + mouse wheel rotates the rectangle, pausing at 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° as you sweep past so squaring up is effortless. Shift + < / > steps 5° at a time.
- Space + mouse wheel grows or shrinks the bridge proportionally.
- The dialog's Width, Height, and Rotation fields take unit-aware
expressions (
10mm,1/2,(5+3)in), and all three values are remembered for the next bridge.
The tool stays active after each click, so you can walk down a row of letters bridging each one — Finish or Escape ends it.