Centerlines and center marks

After you place a drawing view or create a sketch, you can add centerlines and center marks automatically or manually.

Automated centerlines

You can add automated centerlines and center marks to circles, arcs, ellipses, and patterns, including models with holes and extruded cuts (except mid-plane extrusions). iFeatures and iParts can also have automated centerlines and center marks.

When you set up a drawing or drawing template, use options in Document Settings to define the defaults for adding automated centerlines. The settings include types of features to receive centerlines and center marks and if the geometry is normal or parallel projection. You can set thresholds to exclude circular features smaller or larger than the specified radius and smaller than a minimum angle.

The format of a centerline or center mark is specified in the Center Mark Style.

Manual centerlines

You can manually apply four types of centerlines and center marks to individual features or parts in a drawing view.

Setting style for centerlines and center marks

Use the default style associated with the active standard or modify the mark, gap, extension, and other attributes in the style before you place centerlines and center marks in a drawing. The active center mark style controls the appearance for both automated and manual center marks and centerlines. Changes to the style are in effect only for the current document unless you save changes to the style library.

You can change the line type of center marks and centerlines in the Layers section of Style and Standard Editor. The appearance of center marks and centerlines in the drawing is then changed to respect the selected line type.

Tips for working with automated centerlines and center marks

Center of Gravity in drawings

You can calculate the center of gravity of a model for every view. In the browser, select the top level of the model, right-click and select Center of Gravity. The command calculates the center of gravity of the model and produces a center mark on the drawing view at the relative position of the center of gravity.

The center of gravity position on the drawing view is calculated for the model referenced in the drawing view. The center of gravity calculation takes into account the following items:

When you change the model, the Center of Gravity position on the drawing view updates automatically.

Only one center of gravity representation is displayed for one view except for overlay views. They can display one center of gravity per overlaid positional representation as well as the base representation.

The center of gravity is not supported for draft views and views of presentation files.

For cut operations, such as detail views and crop views, the center of gravity calculation is performed on the original component, not the cropped or detail model.

The center mark is formatted by the current center mark style.

You cannot use the drag method to move the center of gravity center mark.