Learn/Shape Generator/Built-in profiles
Base Plate
At a glance
- Rectangular plate with corner fillets
- Bolt patterns and center holes
- Edge treatments and hole sizing driven by parameters
The Base Plate shape (Fabrication category) is the everyday mounting plate: a rectangle with optional rounded corners, a four-hole bolt pattern, and a center hole. It started life as the Plasma workspace's Base Plate tool and moved into the Shape Generator, so the same plate is now available in Drafting Sketch, Design, Laser, and Plasma.
Plate
Width and Height set the outline (default 6 × 6 in), centered on the origin. Turn on Corner fillets to round all four corners with a shared Fillet radius (default 0.5 in) — the corners are true bulge arcs, not segment approximations, and the generator rejects a radius larger than half the shorter side rather than producing self-intersecting geometry.
Bolt pattern and center hole
Bolt pattern (4-hole rectangle) adds a hole at each corner of a rectangle you define by center-to-center spacing: X c-c and Y c-c (default 4 × 4 in), with a shared Bolt hole diameter (default 0.5625 in — clearance for 1/2 in bolts). The pattern is centered on the plate, and spacing must be smaller than the plate in each direction or generation stops with a clear error. Center hole adds one hole at the origin (default 1 in diameter).
All holes land on the HOLES layer and the outline on OUTER, so Plasma and Laser lead-in/cut
ordering treat them correctly on import.
Tips
- Everything is parametric until you insert it — for a plate with slotted holes or a non-standard
pattern, insert the closest base plate and edit it in the workspace, or copy the bundled
.jshapeand make it your own (see Create & Share). - Bare numbers follow your preferred units, so
152.4mmand6(in inch mode) give the same plate.