Donate

Creates a datum plane which can be used as reference for sketches or other datum geometry. Sketches can be attached to datum planes.

Datum Plane crossing 3 corners of the Cube with a Cylinder sketched on it using the Datum Plane as its X-Y Plane.

Prerequisites

A datum plane can only be created inside of a Body. Every body has an origin, which is hidden by default. To be able to refer to the origin base planes, make the origin visible. You can do this before creating a datum plane.

Usage

1. Press the Create a datum plane button.
2. Define Plane parameters. Select a first reference in the 3D view to filter the available attachment modes.
3. Depending on the selected reference, there may be one or more attachment modes available in the the list. The most likely one will automatically be selected and shown in bold in the list. The text Attached with mode along with the attachment mode name will appear in green at the top of the Parameters panel.
4. To add an additional reference, press the next Reference button. Once pressed its label changes to Selecting... until a selection is made.
5. Select an attachment mode in the list.
6. Offsets: Define Attachment Offset values. Note that the x, y and z offset represent the local coordinate system of the datum plane, not the world coordinate system. Therefore the z-offset is always the offset along the datum plane normal vector.
7. Rotation: Changing "Around x-axis" makes the plane rotate around its local X-axis. Changing "Around y-axis" makes the plane rotate around its local Y-axis. Changing "Around z-axis" makes the plane rotate around its local Z-axis.
8. Press OK.

Options

Double-click the DatumPlane label in the Model tree or right-click and select Edit datum in the contextual menu to edit its parameters. For more details about Attachment mode and Attachment offset, see Part EditAttachment.

Preferences

The default diffuse color and transparency of PartDesign datums is controlled by the DefaultDatumColor fine-tuning parameter.

Useful for

Datum planes have their uses:

• as arbitrary mirror plane,
• as support at a desired offset for multiple sketches,
• as support for a sketch that needs to be a specific offset/angle from the origin,
• as visible indicator (for example, a focal plane).

For support of a single sketch, they are basically redundant. They suffer from the Topological naming problem as much as sketches.

Properties

• DatosMapMode: lists the attachment mode used.
• DatosAttachment Offset: applies a transformation (translation and rotation) in reference to the attachment placement.
• DatosLabel: name given to the object, this name can be changed at convenience.