Reference Planes and Drag Controls
After some confusion at work around drag controls and the different way reference planes can affect families, I quickly threw this together. I hope it helps anyone else that has been confused by the topic.
Drag controls will be automatically created when an ‘instance-based’ dimension is created between two reference planes.
The process is:
1. Create a reference place and create your ‘instance-based’ dimension.
2. Check you are not dimensioning to a level or face, otherwise, the drag controls won’t appear.
3. Check the ‘Is reference’ property of the reference plane. This property will affect your family in these ways:
- Not a Reference - This type of reference plane can’t be aligned to or dragged when inserted into the project.
- Strong Reference – This type of reference plane can be aligned to and dragged when inserted into the project. However, its drag controls will drag your whole family.
- Weak Reference – This type of reference plane can also be aligned to and dragged when inserted into the project. However, its drag controls will stretch your family.
- Left, Right, Front, Back, etc (the rest of them) – The rest are all strong reference planes with fun names!
4. Insert your family and start stretching and dragging!
(Note: Drag controls in projects are only visible 2D views.)