Hi ed, I'm not really sure about having the cplane tool work totally differently depending on whether you're in a 2D view or a 3D view when you happen to place it...

Here's an example - say you want to place the cplane on to this curve at the point there to draw a cross-section curve perpendicular to that path curve at that station.



I'm not sure if I completely understand what you are asking for, but it sounds like you're asking for placing the cplane on to that curve to give a completely different result depending on whether it was placed in the Top view versus the 3D view?

That seems like it could easily lead to considerable confusion as well - particularly if you were in the top view to start with and you were planning on working in the localized top view of the cplane once you placed it...


If you just want to rotate the cplane from its current origin and not really place it anywhere else, the easiest way to do that currently is to just right-click or push "Done" at the prompt for placing the cplane origin - that will place the orientation picker right at the current cplane's origin and then you can grab the x or y axis and pivot it. And if you don't want the Top/Front/Right views to reorient into the new cplane's coordinate system you can turn that off by unchecking the "Orient ortho views" checkbox option inside the cplane tool.

Also you also may want to turn off the checkbox for "Align to objects" - that will prevent the z axis of the cplane from aligning to curve tangents or surface normals.


Basically with both "Align to objects" and "Orient ortho views" turned off it should give you the kind of 2d-only workflow that I think you're asking about...

Here's an example:




Note there that with "Orient ortho views" turned off, the 2D view that you're working in will not change to be relative to the cplane, the view stays the same and you will see the cplane angled instead.

If that doesn't do what you need, I'll probably need some examples to understand.

- Michael