As with the Two-Point-Center Rectangle, this new for Inventor 2013 feature has actually been around for some time as an add-in created by Brian Hall. This tool does exactly the same as the Two-Point-Center Rectangle, except for the fact that it allows you to create the rectangle at an angle in the same manner as the old Three-Point Rectangle tool.
A typical workflow goes like this…
In the last installment of this ERP Cabinetmaking Tutorial we were working on the Rail Options sketch, and left off with some rail profiles attached to some geometry that was projected onto the sketch from the Side Elevation sketch. The reason for the separate sketches is pretty simple, if you start piling optional geometry atop of your base feature’s geometry, pretty soon you have a pile of unmanageable gobbledygook that is sure to explode the first time it is configured via iLogic. It’s not pretty, trust me.
As-is, the Rail Options sketch is shy 8 dimensions of a fully constrained state. All of our profiles are dimensioned for thickness with the Face_Frame_Thickness parameter, and the top and bottom rails have their widths accounted for temporarily, and all profiles are attached to the line that represents the face of the face frame via a collinear constraint…
This new feature for Inventor 2013 makes life a lot easier for those of us who create a lot of sketches. In the old days (Inventor 2011 and earlier) sketches needed to be drawn roughly to the correct size, otherwise the first dimension added to the sketch could blow the whole thing up –turning things inside-out and other undesirable behavior. In the old days, you watched the status bar, which is not very conducive to the free flow of design energies, and more recently, there is the “heads up” indicators that follow your cursor as you draw –which is actually more annoying. It’s like having a couple of flies buzzing around your cursor……flies that are always obscuring the view of your design.
The image to the right shows a freehand sketch similar to one that may be created in Inventor. It’s a quick hashing out of a shape as a designer would do as opposed to the plodding input needed to comply with the old schema. Continue reading
This new feature for Inventor 2013 takes a bit of getting used to, but when it all boils down, it’s a nice addition to the program. In the old days, when you clicked on the Create 2D Sketch button, a new sketch was automatically created on a default plane that could be configured via the Application Options. The new scheme flies out the representation of the origin planes seen to the right where you click the plane you need and you’re off to the races. The program then spins the selected plane normal to the user, the plane representations disappear, and you are ready to create a sketch.
People who nearly always create their sketches on the same plane may not like the new feature as it would be a tad slower, but for Layout Part modeling and most other workflows it’s a time saver, and its slick as snot. Really, it is 
This New Feature for Inventor 2013 is obviously geared specifically towards the Inventor noob. What it does is this; noob (or overzealous old-timer) clicks on Extrude or Revolve with no Sketch (not the more common lack of closed loop –no sketch at all!).This is not actually what pops up. You get the expanded version shown below…
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