Inventor Sketching, Constraint Inference Scope

I can hear the sighs now, another Inventor sketching technique. The most basic process in Inventor that we all do everyday has a myriad of techniques and I would like to suggest one more in this article. This one is about Constraint Inference Scope.

Just to be sure we are on the same page, lets review what constraint inference is in an Inventor sketch. When you are sketching and you have "Infer constraints" on and have some constraints selected, you will notice that your sketch will "infer" a sketch constraint from another sketch entities. If you have "Persist constraints" on, when you place the sketch entity it will apply the inferred sketch constraint.

By default the Constraint Inference Scope is set to "Geometry in current command" when a new sketch is created. If you chose one of the other settings, it is saved with the active sketch and will returned to the selected setting when the sketch is edited.

If you chose either "All Geometry" or "Select" and place sketch entities on the screen, the inferred constraints allow you to select a remote coincident constraint. If the "All Geometry" setting in on, my line will present an inferred coincident constraint anywhere along the existing line extension in space. If you choose the "Select" option, you can select only the existing sketch entities you would like to participate in the inferred coincident constraint. Please note that the entities that you select change color slightly to indicate they were picked.

Below is a short video that will illustrate these two settings. The process works with other sketch entities as well such as circles, rectangles, and arcs.