Thanks for all the responses, I'm not having an attitude toward any of them, but I have used it extensively in 2006, and it is not working the same; sometimes, but not always, it loses it's coordination to my mouse movements. i.e. I can be looking directly down the 'z' axis (@ xy plane) and when I move in 'x' direction after selecting that axis in triad, it moves in one of those unstable ways as if I were trying to move in 'z' axis while looking down 'z' axis.
What you say is what I have to do to "free it up" Heckler and then I can drag at will (although not snap to endpt without using RMB in-context menu, etc), but wasnt that way in past, I could just go to it, LMB center, drag to line endpt for example, it snaps in and we're off and running. WRT using tab, yeah I do that at creation, but when editing I can never get anything out of that (if there is a way Id love to be informed). I apologize, for the "stubborn and confused" comment about SW, but it's the best way I can describe what it was doing. Like I said above, imagine sketching in a 2-d plane to which you are looking normal and for which your motions are locked (confirmed), and when you try to drag an end point for example, it moves as if you are moving in the direction normal (ie very drastic and uncontrollable) to the plane even though it's movement stays in the plane as you have dictated (this is the lack of coordination of which I speak).
I hear you entirely on the fragility of in-context relations, however, the triad is in itself not a relation, and when creating certain 3d-sketch-composed objects, in-context is really the best way. I do similar to you by avoiding in-context relations; often when I do actually apply in-context relations for initial creation, if they are not really something for which I require continued parametric behavior, I will delete those relations in the part and define the part intrinsically and then lock it down in the assembly with conventional mates.
It's fine, I just wanted to know if it was something others had come across or some fundamental change in 2007. I can work around it. I think it's just in the context of an assy, works fine in the part (except for node snap), just not as efficient using it there.
Thanks for the time everyone
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