Reorient sketch greyed out, how to reenable it?

[stevecoh1]

Noob question.

After some teeth-gnashing with some good help from the NEW TO FREECAD? - START HERE post, I managed to create the first step of my design, two rectangles in the XZ plane, fully constrained and properly dimensioned. But my intent was to make this a 3d sketch and I want to sketch the XY plane now. But Sketch->Reorient Sketch is now greyed out. I think it's because my design is fully constrained (but not sure). Anyway, how may I enable "Reorient Sketch" to allow the XY (or YZ) planes to be sketched?

Thanks.

[drmacro]

A sketch in FreeCAD is a 2D drawing are on one of the base planes.

In typical workflow, a constraind sketch like you describe can either be Extruded in Part workbench or used in a Pad operation in Part Design workbench. These produce 3D solid models.

[stevecoh1]

Thank you. But this thing I'm designing isn't really a "part". It is more like the inside of a box, so I've resisted going the Part way. Actually it's a TV alcove built into a wall, that I want to make smaller, so what I'm designing is framing that will fit inside it. But first I want to sketch the existing alcove. Is there another workbench that would be better than Part?

[Bance]

Resistance is futile.

[stevecoh1]

Resistance is futile.

So it would seem.

OK, so I surrendered. I'm using the Part Workbench. It lets me set the dimensions, origins, and all that. But it won't SHOW me the dimensions on the drawing. How do I make a Part Workbench drawing do that?

[Bance]

Drawings are pen and ink, in CAD we make models.

Part WB has primarily a CSG(constructive solid geometry) approach. One creates cubes,cylinders,spheres etc. and combines them with Boolean operations.

PartDesign WB uses a sketch and feature based workflow.

Which are you using?

3D models are not conventionally littered with dimensions.

If they are required the 3D model may be rendered to a 2D drawing using the TechDraw WB. Temporary dimensions(measurements) maybe made with the measuring tools available in the appropriate WB.

[rich61]

Is this what you want to do ? Except the outside of this box is your wall and much larger.

Box.png (1.94 KiB) Viewed 467 times

Workbench Part Design, create body, create a first sketch, dimension it, then upon sketch exit you can pad it. Then you have a rectangular 3D solid. Then you create second sketch that is the inside of your box alcove, that is a pocket operation after you exit that sketch.

It is the pad and the pocket operations that give you your 3D object from the two 2D sketches, not a reorient sketch. You only sketch/draw on one plane for something like this.

Look for a tutorial that uses PAD and POCKET.