Parametric Sketcher

On this page

Change a profile through dimensions

A designer wants to widen a profile while keeping holes aligned and curves tangent. Moving each point by hand adds work and creates room for mistakes. Parametric Sketcher lets your application express these relationships as dimensions and geometric constraints.

Build sketch tools for CAD editors, configurable products, and manufacturing profiles.

How it works

Create profile geometry and add dimensions or relationships. The built-in solver adjusts geometry that is free to move so it follows those rules. Your application shows the result and whether the rules can be satisfied. Once users accept a profile, check its closed regions before using it to build a surface or solid.

Set dimensions and geometric relationships

Combine points, lines, circles, arcs, ellipses, and spline curves. Set lengths, distances, radii, and angles. Add relationships such as coincidence, parallelism, perpendicularity, concentricity, and tangency, with supported continuity conditions where curves meet.

A fixed mounting point can stay in place while a width changes. Equal-radius holes can grow together while their centers remain aligned. Your application chooses which geometry is fixed and which dimensions users can edit.

Solver feedback shows whether a solution was found, which constraints remain unsatisfied, and whether geometry still has freedom to move. Larger edits can run in steps so your interface can show progress or let users cancel. Keep the accepted profile available while a proposed change is reviewed, then apply the solved result when users accept it.

Apply your own design rules

A product configurator may need a mounting rule, a clearance allowance, or a relationship between several sizes. Your application can translate those rules into supported dimensions and geometric constraints, giving users familiar product choices.

For requirements beyond standard relations, we can scope custom implementations of relations, constraints, and solving behavior. Representative profiles help define supported geometry and expected edits. Product engineers control allowed input ranges and production rules; the sketch solver maintains the chosen geometric relationships.

Handle custom sizes without redrawing each order

A manufacturer sells a profile in many widths and heights, with mounting holes that must stay aligned. Redrawing every order adds engineering work and repeated checks before a quote or manufacturing outline can be prepared.

A configurable application can expose a few customer-facing dimensions while the sketch preserves required relationships. Users change a size, inspect the updated profile, and see whether its rules can be satisfied. A checked profile can feed later modeling or manufacturing preparation.

Sales or planning staff can explore supported size options while engineering controls the template. Orders outside its rules can go for review with proposed dimensions and solving feedback. This reduces repeated drawing work without handing design-rule decisions to each order handler.

Turn curves into usable regions

A drawing may contain enclosed areas, internal holes, and construction lines. Region tools find bounded areas so users can choose which ones belong to a profile. Keep an outer contour and its holes together, then check closure, boundary intersections, and hole placement.

Region area can support material estimates or comparisons between size options. A reviewed region can become input to an extrusion, a pocket, or a manufacturing outline through suitable modeling tools. Offsets prepare parallel profiles or allowances around a contour.

Combine and cut profiles with 2D Boolean operations

An integration can combine region handling with planar Boolean operations: union joins areas, subtraction cuts one area from another, and intersection keeps their shared area.

For example, a panel configurator could subtract selected cutout regions from a closed panel outline. Users change panel dimensions, review the openings, and prepare an accepted outline for cutting. After a Boolean operation changes boundaries, the integration checks resulting contours and determines which source dimensions and relations still apply. Recheck outer contours and holes after offsets and other shape changes as well.

Talk to us about your sketch workflow with examples of the profiles, constraints, and edits your users need.