Auto LInes... General WTF?

[UseAsIs]

I have seen a few people say Auto Lines are pure garbage. I haven't used them much, but they have usually worked the few times I have messed around with them.

Today, I made one by selecting a plane on my -X vector on the CAD. A nice, long rectangular plane square with the machine, no weird angles or avoidance features. I made 15 points going in the Y+ direction. The paths looked fine. I hit "test" and it ran fine. So I created it, closed the dialog, and Shift+Clicked the -Y plane perpendicular to it to create a new Auto Line with the same parameters moving along that plane.

Holy *heck* it went nuts. I had paths going up two feet above my part, out to X+ another few feet, and coming back down, points out in outer space, vectors going inside my CAD, you name it. I tried to adjust it by key-in, but it would just snap back to insanity-mode after entering values. Keying in vectors properly did not help. Saving, closing and restarting PCDMIS didn't help. The paths were not going to display anything remotely close to my CAD. I cancelled it by closing the dialog and tried again, but each time I closed it without creating it and trying again by clicking the face, it just went right back to the previous nonsense.

I gave up, copied the Auto Line feature that DID work in Summary mode, pasted it right underneath, hit F9 and renamed it and keyed-in the proper origin, length and vectors. Perfect. It went right where I wanted and the test-run worked just fine. This is a .STEP file that I am using for CAD model.

So this thread is intended to be a general "WTF" thread for Auto Lines. What weird quirks do they have? What should people know about them? Is there a type of CAD model file that works best? Can they be Shift+Clicked to create new ones, the way circles and cylinders can? What is the best way to get an Auto Line in the general ballpark of where you want it when selecting a CAD face? Should they just be avoided altogether?

Very interested to hear peoples tips and complaints and stories about Auto Lines, thanks for any input on this!!

[Darrollh]

I never use auto lines for that very reason!

[UseAsIs]

I think I'm leaning toward this solution at this point lol

[AndersI]

I tried to do something similar to what you describe - first clicked a line in the YPLUS direction on an XPLUS surface, then a line in the XPLUS direction on an YMINUS surface) and if worked without problems. There must be some additional factor involved (F5 - Part/Machine?)...

LIN2       =FEAT/CONTACT/LINE/DEFAULT,CARTESIAN,BOUNDED
            THEO/<115,-25,-22>,<115,10,-22>,<0,1,0>,<1,0,0>,<0,0,1>,35
            ACTL/<115,-25,-22>,<115,10,-22>,<0,1,0>,<1,0,0>,<0,0,1>,35
            TARG/<115,-25,-22>,<115,10,-22>,<0,1,0>,<1,0,0>,<0,0,1>
            SHOW FEATURE PARAMETERS=NO
            SHOW CONTACT PARAMETERS=NO
LIN3       =FEAT/CONTACT/LINE/DEFAULT,CARTESIAN,BOUNDED
            THEO/<-15.137,-50,-35>,<19.863,-50,-35>,<1,0,0>,<0,-1,0>,<0,0,-1>,35
            ACTL/<-15.137,-50,-35>,<19.863,-50,-35>,<1,0,0>,<0,-1,0>,<0,0,-1>,35
            TARG/<-15.137,-50,-35>,<19.863,-50,-35>,<1,0,0>,<0,-1,0>,<0,0,-1>
            SHOW FEATURE PARAMETERS=NO
            SHOW CONTACT PARAMETERS=NO

[UseAsIs]

It just seems random almost. This is stuff that worked just fine in the basic Hexagon classes, and it usually works until it just doesn't... thanks for the interest in my post at least