What every drafter should know about Autodesk Inventor’s Trim and Extend Commands.

February 2010 Paul Munford
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Inventor Tutorials

By default, when trimming or extending in an Autodesk Inventor sketch, all geometry will be used as a boundary to trim or extend to.

It’s worth knowing how to pick the geometry you want to Trim, Extend or Split to. I would also like to show you how to quickly toggle between the Trim, Extend and Split commands.

Global Trim

All geometry can be trimmed to.

Autodesk Inventor's Global trim command

Select portion of curves to trim or press and hold control key

Holding down the ‘Shift‘ key will toggle between ‘Trim‘ and ‘Extend‘.

Select Curve to extend or press and hold control key

 

Trim to selected Geometry

If you want to trim or extend to a specific boundary, hold down the CTRL key after selecting the trim or extend command and pick your boundary geometry. Right click and pick ‘Continue’ to confirm your selection and then pick the item you want to trim.

Autodesk Inventor CTRL trim

Select geometry used for trim

Holding down the ‘Shift‘ key will toggle between ‘Trim‘ and ‘Extend‘.

Select curve to extend

 

Changing commands – Trim, Extend, Split

You can toggle the command between trim and extend by holding down the ‘Shift‘ key. You can also access the ‘Trim‘, ‘Extend’ or ‘Split’ commands by right clicking at any point whilst in the trim, extend or split commands and picking from the shortcut menu.

Autodesk Inventor Toggle trim, split, extend

Continue to next step

Changing from Trim to Extend and back by toggling the SHIFT key or picking the Split command from the context menu will save you countless picks and clicks whilst preparing your Inventor sketches.

I hope that you found this tip useful!

 

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