Hello All,

New to solidworks and looking forward to learning a lot here. i'm playing around with sketches and here are a few of my observations / troubles

1. if you have created several separate sketches, and you go and edit a sketch, all sketches that came afterwards, disappear from the graphics display. this is somewhat counter intuitive if i want to align a sketch to another sketch, i always have to choose the latest sketch.

2. whenever you draw a multiple line path, each line is really separate. is there a way to CONNECT or GROUP these lines, so that maybe I can move them all together?

3. moving and aligning. This is where the most basic frustrations have come up. I have 2 sketches. one a circle, one a profile. they are misaligned and free in space.

the profile, i am trying to align at a tangent point to the circle in order to do a sweep around the circle. this task seems easy enough. please confirm if I have these steps correct.

from the top view, I must

1. using dimensions, align the profile with the center of the circle.

2. using geometric relations, make the circle coincident with the profile.

at this point, i am aligned with the top view, but the 2 sketches are still not connected. i try to do the same from the front view, and I get nowhere.

then i wonder, why does it require so many steps just to achieve this basic setup? something is off, and i believe i may be missing something fundamental. in all other 3d applications, there are instant snapping and aligning features. I know there is a quicksnaps feature, but it looks like that only applies to when I first draw the sketch. Here I am concerned with moving and aligning after the fact.

Looking forwarding to clearning some of these things up.

THanks!