Creating a Tri-Tangent Circle

This task shows you how to create a tri-tangent circle by creating three tangents.

By default, circle centers appear on the sketch. In case you create circles by clicking, if you do not need them, you can specify this, see the customizing section of this user's guide.
Create two circles and a line.

  1. Click Tri-Tangent Circle .

  2. Select the first circle.

  1. Select the second circle.

  1. Select the line.

The tri-tangent circle is created. Constraints are similarly assigned to this circle on the condition that you previously activated Geometrical Constraints in the Sketch tools toolbar.

  • If you select a point the created constraint is a coincidence.
  • As there are several tangencies for a considered curve (circle, conic, spline, etc), tangent is created as close as possible to where you clicked on the curve.
Ensure that your sketch is consistent before creating tri-tangent circles (you can use Sketch Analysis for this). Otherwise, the system will not compute the tangencies properly.