How do you constrain the angle of a sketched ellipse?

[tomstickland]

Simple task:
Make an elliptical boss.
I've sketched an ellipse, but there appears to be now way of setting the angle of the major axis.
If I draw a construction line then there's no way of fixing it to the quadrants of the ellipse.
So I split the ellipse into 2, with a construction line down the middle. Constraining this has proved to be very fiddly - almost impossible to select the centre point of the ellipse for example, it keeps snapping to the construction line. Very difficult to select the end points of the ellipse to make them touch. You can't apply a "point" selection filter, so you have to hover over the end of the lines hoping it will select the point.

So, what's the recommended way of doing this then?

 

[tomstickland]

I just tried adding "auto constraints" and it applied a constraint called "conic horizontal". So that's given me a clue. How would I manually add this constraint?

 

[SiW979]

There are a number of ways, but the easiest is to draw a reference line from the center and intersect it with the elipse at then pick constraints, pick the edge of the elipse and the straight line and choose the parallel constraint. Sounds strange, but trust me, it does work. have a look at the attached sketch, if you look through the listed constraints, you will see a parallel one listed.



Best regards

Simon NX4.0.4.2 MP10 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c - (NX6.0.3.6 MP2 native)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of times when it's taken away...

 

[cowski]

If you look at the help files, constraining an ellipse is one of the examples.