Joseph Toumanios | Mechanical Engineer

Though the 2 dimensional sketch to the left seems to be moderately simple in appearance, the technique used to create it was quite complex, but convenient for altering existing sketches for future designs.  The approach used is referred to as the constraints technique.  The way it works is by creating randomly sized circles and randomly skew lines, but constraining them afterwards to create the sketch.  This will ensure that lines are parallel to one another, horizontal, tangent, or in ratio to curtain other shapes.  The circles are confined based off their relative location to another point and concentric in some instances.  Changing any one dimension on this sketch will change every other dimension to the correct scaling.