Today’s Aaron video on the Rectangle tool

In the video, he mentions that he would explain all of the inferences in the Rectangle tool flyout menu but I missed what the last (magenta) one is for. The Red/Green/Blue ones are kind of obvious but I’m not clear on that last one. I think he may have inadvertently skipped that in the video?

You’re right that he skipped over it. I had to re-watch it myself to be sure. As a rule, the magenta axis is for lines parallel/perpendicular to a specified edge, as opposed to global axes (RGB/XYZ). For example, if you have a line that’s at a 45 or 35 degree angle, like the side of a polygon, the magenta axis should put that rectangle either parallel or perpendicular to it.
Though I tried it out on my iPad, I unfortunately couldn’t get a screenshot and hold my pencil in position at the same time.

This pic may help :

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I assume you need to select the specified edge first? Or does it work off the closest edge? Can it work off a guideline?

@wataru.kannuzuki had is mostly correct. I’ll offer only one slight modification which is to say that while the color Magenta is used to identify both parallel and perpendicular inferences, the rectangle offers only parallel (which the icon for the button tries trying to convey). When you have the Line tool active, for example, you’ll see there are buttons available for locking to either parallel or perpendicular inferences.

Selecting a face will most likely allow you then infer to a plane that is parallel to that face. And generally speaking, you’ll find that these more complex types of interactions are easier to accomplish with the pencil preferences set to Click-move-click mode vs Just Draw mode. The reason is that with Click-move-click mode you are able to lightly hover the pencil over inferences in the model (faces, edges, endpoints) prior to pressing down with the pencil to begin a drawing operation. With Just Draw mode it’s a little trickier to obtain the intended pre-inference since the pencil begins drawing immediately when it makes contact with the screen.

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Thanks, Mike. I copied the line from the site’s help menu, but didn’t realize it was only for lines.

I just hovered over the line while drawing the rectangle and waited for the colors to change, though it was admittedly a tad finnicky.

I’m confused. How do you hover over the line WHILE drawing the rectangle? I’m sure there’s something I’m not grasping here. I wish this had been in the video.

You are probably in ‘Just Draw’ mode.
Changing into ‘Click-move-click’ mode let you do the hovering.

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To help Illustrate what @MikeWayzovski is saying:

Just Draw mode does not allow the option to hover over something to obtain an inference before drawing. Click-move-click does.

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