Inventor - Text and Flipping the Normal

By Shaun Griffiths

When building work planes it is worth noting that there is a positive and negative side. In my case orange is positive and blue is negative. This may not have any immediate effect on your model, but is worth considering when embossing with text for example, as sketching the text on the negative side will mirror the text and therefore the emboss.

Here we can see I have built a workplane with the negative face (blue) pointing outward.

If I sketch on this plane and apply text, the text will be mirrored.

Resulting in this subsequent emboss.

This may be the effect you are after. However, if you right click on the work plane and flip the normal, prior to applying the text it will alter the direction of the work plane.

Therefore, resulting in the positive face (orange) pointing out instead.

This allows for the text to be represented in the correct orientation.