CONVERSION OF A3 FORMAT

Your best bet is probably going to be scaling in Acad before import. I think Pro/E just looks at the numbers, sees 17 or 420 and performs no conversions. That'll be good for a quick and dirty hit the ground running start. You will, as you get more familiar with Pro/E, end up overhauling the format to take advantage of tables, parametric notes, etc. If you don't need a quick and dirty; forget importing, read up on the subject and create new formats from the ground up. (Any kind of intricate line art type goodies I do in part mode datum sketch(s) and export. I don't get along that well with Pro/E's drawing mode sketch tools. Need to figure out if it's me or the tools that suck someday. If they'd just duplicate the part mode sketcher, I'd love it.)

I don't know where there are any metric formats other than the ones PTC furnishes but ... Drawing formats (inch) commercial version

educational version if you want to examine some others.

I'd spend some time looking for discussions on the topic of drawing format, template, and dtl setup file creation and usage (or not; I don't use drawing templates). It's a slightly complicated subject and not one I can really wrap my head around, sort of "a dirty job but somebody has to do it" thing and there's no one to delegate it to. I know I've seen some informative discussions but don't have any links for you. Search this group, eng-tips, mcadcentral, ptcuser (specifically) and the web in general to pick up on some of the less frequented sites.

I can't think of much that is LESS eviable than going from Metric to Inch and all the idiocy of Imperial Units (aka US Customary) in as much as they were never much more than tradesmen's conveniences and never amounted to a system. Page sizes are even more awkward because Metric preserved a pretty consistent aspect ratio from one page size to the next. The Imperial "A", "B", "C", "D" and "E" sheet sizes have at least two aspect ratios: just divide 8.5 by 11 ("A" size) and divide 11 by 17 ("B" size). In the first place, .772, in the second, .647. How about "C" size, 17 by 22? Once again, .772, so "A" and "C" have the same aspect ratio, but then you'll also find that "B" and "D" too have the same ratio, while "F" size, 28 by 40 has an aspect ratio of .7. The A series of metric paper sizes all have about the same aspect ratio of .7 or paper size expanding along an even 35 degree slope. The numbers speak for themselves. Your A3 format at 297mm x 420 mm translates roughly into a "B" size sheet but with two different aspect ratios: "B", .647 and "A3", .707 or 11.7" by 16.6" (too big in height combined with too small in length). In other words, your imported format will fit nicely in height (with a little scaling) but will be way too short in length. You might consider saving a corner with the title block, company logo, proprietary statement and default tolerances, but blowing everything else away and starting over.

If you are determined to bring it all in, as is, export the original as dxf or iges. In Pro/e, start a new Format, "B" size, do 'Insert>Shared Data>From File', scan to your exported format in dxf or iges, and place the geometry in the empty format. It should include an outline, logo, some text and places for table information. Place the table information from Pro/e over or in place of any variable information. Where the variable information occurs in the imported format, replace with a Pro/e table of about the same size and proportions. Fill the table with format parameters, like &size, &part_name, &description1, &description2, &next_assembly, etc.. There is no such thing as simply importing a format from AutoCAD into Pro/e and, out of the box, having it work as you'd expect it to. You ought to take the Pro/e Detailing course.

David Janes

"SAI" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@73g2000cwn.googlegroups.com...

US units are logical; they are based on a binary system: 1 inch, 1/2, 1/4,

1/8, 1/16, etc. There is a method to this part of the madness. Now yards, fathoms, pounds, and fortnights are another story ;^)

Yes, I thought there might be some concept behind this! Binary almost makes sense.... except when you start to do tolerancing and, as in the 20th century, you've converted the fractions to decimals. So that 1 is an integer, .5 a single place fractional decimal, but half of that, .25 requires now twice the precision ~ two decimal places ~ to realize. And, so it goes, so that by the time one gets to the modest 1/64th, (approx 16 thousandths, easily within the visible range of measurement) one is dealing with an unmeasurable six decimal places of precision... .015625 for a sixty-fourth of an inch. And, now keep halving to get to modern CNC accuracies in ten-thousandths of an inch. Well, half of a sixty-fouth would be a one-twenty-eighth (.0078125) or eight decimal places to say eight thousandths, or three decimal places worth of significant information. And, we are still in the range of 3 place decimals, just getting bigger, more irrelevant asses. So, how about 1/256th which gets you out to 8 decimal places to express, in significant figures, .004, a simple three decimal fraction and continuing to 1/512, out to nine decimal places to express, MOST PRECISELY, 3 digits worth of information (.001953125 or .002) approximately. Could we get out to 10 digits to express, most precisely, 3 digits worth of information? Yes, this dumbass binary systems lets us do it, mandates it, in fact. Keep going: to get a simple one-thousandth of an inch, STILL 3 significant figures, requires 11 decimal places to get 3 significant ones ~ 1/1024 = .0009765625 = .001. How much stupider does it have to be, from an engineering and scientific viewpoint? OR how much smarter does a rational system have to be (skip halving, perhaps?) to qualify as the successor? And we aren't even talking about gages ~ sheet, wire, shot, tubing, etc. or apothecary's measures to standard ounce conversions or ounce/point/pint measures to cubic feet (no correlation), i.e. linear to volume measure -- a corollary to cc/gram or liter/kilogram. The closest we got was "a pint a pound the world around", still no cognizance of volume by a standard cubic linear measurement. Not a millionth of the US population is even dimly aware of how many CIs are in a pint/quart/gallon. In fact, check Machinerys Handbook, see if you can find it there. You can find plenty of US/metric conversions, but none within its own goofy non-system of tradesmen's units.

David Janes

"ms" wrote in message news:quSdnSDmMsl-POrYnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...

The binary system might work well for the computer but not for my brain!

Mostly,using inches doesn't matter when it's on a computer. It doesn't matter to me if it's 1.00mm or .040" - but fractional dimensions are another thing altogether! And don't get me started on screws.

You know which countries don't use metric? Burma, Somalia, and the USA.