Set up drawings to create a 3D model

When concept modelling you may have three orthographic sketches that you wish to use to create a 3D model.  The idea being that if you have the front view of your part shown on the yz plane, the plan view on the xy and so on, you can use two 2D curves shown on views normal to each other to describe a 3D curve. 

The easiest way to do this is with the Sketch Tracer workbench to orientate the sketches, and the Freestyle workbench to create wireframe geometry.  The Sketch Tracer workbench has superb control over the scaling and positioning of the views, and the Freestyle workbench has a very useful push/pull control over node points on generated wireframe and surfaces.  For those of you without these (expensive!) workbenches, there is alternative methodology!

Creating the reference sketches.  This can be done using the commonly available Generative Shape Design workbench!  Firstly you need to create three sketches of rectangles with the appropriate dimensions to house your model view on your three base planes in the appropriate positions (xy - plan, yz - front, zx - side).  Fill these rectangles using the Fill Surface tool and individually apply a material to these surfaces that is composed of an image file.  I normally use the chessboard material from the default material library.  Once you have applied the material to each surface, find the material in the specification tree (under the node for the surface in question) and double click.  On the texture tab, your image file can be substituted for chessboard image, then scaled and positioned accordingly.  Just be aware that every image is imported square, so the scaling parity will need to be broken.

Creating the wireframe geometry.  As has been suggested in the first paragraph, you can position geometry in 3D that you can see in two 2D views normal to each other.  With the GSD workbench, this has to be done in by joining reference geometry points with 3D splines then modifying the point coordinates to fine tune.

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