Hi clegg,
> inside of a rectangle how do i place a boolean object say 5.0 mm from one edge and 3.0mm from another accurately to cut a hole
There are a few different ways... the main thing to drill a hole will be to draw a circle at your desired position and then use the circle as the cutting object when doing a boolean difference.
When you draw the circle you can use numeric coordinate input to put the center of the circle at a specific coordinate value. One of the options for numeric input is a "relative" point mode that will make the picked point be offset by your entered coordinates from the acutal point you pick. You activate that by typing a r character in front of your numbers.
So for example when you are in the circle command drawing your circle, if you want to place the center of the circle at an offset of 5mm from the left and 3mm upwards from a corner of the rectangle, type in this:
r3,5
and then push the Enter key, now you'll notice that when you move the mouse around the active point is offset by 3 in x and 5 in y so now when you snap the point onto the corner of the rectangle your circle's origin point will be at a distance of 3,5 inside that rectangle.
Another way you can do it is to just draw the circle of your desired radius and just put it anywhere inside the rectangle to start with. Then select it and run the Transform > Move command. Pick the center of the circle as the base point and then for the target point push the "Distance from edge" button that shows up in the command options. That will allow you to enter in a distance value and then pick an edge, and it will move the circle's origin point (or whatever point you picked for the base point) to be at that distance away from that edge. You'd do that twice, once for the bottom edge and once for the side edge.
The first way using relative point numeric entry is a bit faster since it places the circle in the right spot right at the beginning.
Let me know if you're still stuck or need more explanation on either of these methods.
- Michael
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