New warning in WF3

In what version of Pro/e? And how did you get past the error message? BTW, supposedly they fixed some stuff in WF3 to make sketcher more robust, less likely to seize up with complicated geometry.

David Janes

WF3 M050. Message popped (in bottom screen message area) after returning from sketcher to a feature, like sweep/solid protrusion or extrude (tried both). Alas, flipping of sketch lines still occurs sometimes, like when after laborious drawing a lot of arcs, tangent one to another, I get after some time everything reverted, ie arcs have the same diameter, the same center as intended, but the portion I wanted to have disappears, and the portion I removed- appears. No simple way to repair it, the only way is to redo everything. Sometimes I get the warning, sometimes I don't. I've seen it in solidworks just once, when in WF it's quite often. Did it occur in old proe or it's a new achievement? Konrad

I forgot to add it's x64. Guys using x86 don't report such problems, but they're not me, maybe they have other sketching habbits. Konrad

I have seen something like this before, don't remember how long ago. I made a slot with rounded ends by making two circles to get the dim between them for dimensioning the slot length. Then added two lines tangent to each side of the circles and trimmed. Seems like it didn't used to be as easy to get tangent lines like this to be or remain tangent. Anyway the arcs flipped inward, no error message, just wrong. I thought it might have something to do with the way Pro/e breaks circles into two semi-circles at 0 degrees and

180 degrees and setting lines tangent at the breaks. I couldn't confirm this though.

BTW, this never happened when I did the lines first and added 3 point arcs to the ends. So if that's what's happening to you, it seems kinda buggy. Also, for tangent lines between two circles/arcs, there's a new (within the last few revs) 2-tangent line tool that works very well.

If this doesn't happen all the time, it makes it tricky to narrow down the causes. But more puzzling is the fact that, when you redo it, it sounds like it works okay. Does it have some trimming preference and it just needs convincing that you're serious about doing the unpreferred way?

But, you may be right about sketcher practices. Doesn't seem like the difference between 32-bit processor and 64-bit processor should cause this kind of problem. The code is supposed to be identical except for different compilations. More likely the way Pro/e constrains sketches and the inherent difficulties of doing it automatically with Intent Manager and getting stuff constrained so that it doesn't blow up when something changes. Speaking of sketcher practices, the difficulty of getting arcs constrained tangent to each other so they wouldn't go crazy when something changed is probably why I gave up on using them. Whenever possible, I just use rounds which seems to have an easier time of calculating intersections of arcs and of changing radiuses without everything blowing up, principally because the base geometry is nailed down. With rounds, when the radiuses get small enough to cause failures with arcs (because they suddenly need a line to fill in the gap), that line/surface is there already. Sketched arcs always seemed to me to be failure prone, especially when compared to the robustness of rounds. Even that slot with the rounded ends I would do today as a rectangle of the full slot length and width and round the ends with the round tool, full round. This method is bulletproof. And it dimensions correctly to ANSI standards.

I just noticed that double clicking a feature shows the sketch and dims for editing. But I hadn't realized that you could grab drag the sketch entities to modify the size. In fact, you can grab a corner to change two dims at the same time. The sketch doesn't show grab handles on it but it acts that way. You have to get it to highlight in red first though. Has this been around for a while and I just didn't notice it?

David Janes

Right, David, rounding with a feature instead putting arcs to a sketch is better, but "the better is the enemy of the good"- a Polish saying. When I make a complicated swept blend along a 3D spline, it doesn't always face rounding all edges with a green. I didn't realize that I was always using a trimmed circle to get an arc- maybe it's a good point to investigate. I'll try a start+end+center arcs. And yes, the problems are non-traceable, at least for me. They usually occur after making lots of changes- I do initial stages of designs, where you redo everything till it's acceptable. But yesterday it got flipped just after I clicked the green V closing the newly created feature with internal sketch. Well, the feature was quite equilibristic (a tube wound around something, and the tube is carburated with 3 smooth grooves hellically going along the tube).

Easy access to feature dimensions by double clicking doesn't amaze me that much, as it's what I'm used to from before, when using solidworks. Anyway, it's a nice move towards interactivness of proe. Konrad

"I just noticed that double clicking a feature shows the sketch and dims for editing. But I hadn't realized that you could grab drag the sketch entities to modify the size. In fact, you can grab a corner to change two dims at the same time. The sketch doesn't show grab handles on it but it acts that way. You have to get it to highlight in red first though. Has this been around for a while and I just didn't notice it?"

I think it's WF old. You have to be careful with it. If, in Edit mode, you double click a dimension and it doesn't activate the little input box go to (menu) Edit -> Undo and see if it says something like "Undo Move ..." (or "Drag") or something or other. You've inadvertently moved (?) some nearby section geometry. Either zoom in close enough there's nothing but the dimension in the pick aperature or select the dim, RMB, Value.

If wishes wuz fishes there would be a couple of config options added. One the makes a sketcher dimension Lock persistent (I have to resort to creating a Relation as it is) and one to disable the Edit mode Drag capabilities (does ANYONE really use that?).

`;^) Like that.

I don't have anything worthwhile to say about your problem other than, if you haven't already considered it, maybe breaking complex sections up into two or more datum sketches and Use Edge for the feature section. Or, maybe, adding some additional construction geometry (to an already complex section?) to make constraint solution less ambiguous. Sorry ...

Yeah, why doesn't double click on a feature in a Feature Browser do the same thing?

Konrad

Well, the best solution to my problems are the ones that I find by myself. Anyway, thanks for some thoughts. Konrad

Often, when I've double clicked a dimension and it doesn't show the input box, what's moved is not section geometry, but the dimension itself. In double clicking, the mouse moved slightly which Pro/e somehow interprets as a click drag. When you do "Undo Move", it's undoing the move of the dimension.

I didn't before because I didn't know the ability existed. Now that I've accidentally "discovered" this ability to edit drag skecther entities, it should come in handy. I do a lot of rough, preliminary design, lots of top down modeling. I have the unfortunate tendency to use features in other models as references when I don't really want or care to have the one dependent on the other. It's just handy. But if I had a way to visually refernce those features while I drag position/size the local feature, I anticipate it'd be a big benefit.

It could be as much benefit and as often used as another "new" thing I've recently "discovered" ~ copy/paste of features, like an on-the-fly UDF. Select one or more features, press ^C/^V. And the paste interface pops up. All feature dimensions can be selected for modification or accepted as-is and references come up to keep or to select alternates. Strikes me that it's better than a one for one replacement of UDFs: does everything a UDF does but skips the reference model slopped half over the working window, does a better job of highlighting references on the EXISTING model making the picking of alternate referneces much easier and because you begin by picking the features to copy/paste, from the model or tree, you see before you start what you're copying. It's just a more direct, simple, obvious and successful approach. And it takes care of naming this informal group of features.

David Janes

>

Ah! Makes sense.

UDF's are something I've never delved into. Looked briefly and wondered if there was anything there that Copy / Paste / Paste Special didn't bring to the table.

(Begging Konrad's pardon for meandering off ...) If you haven't already, look at Copy / Paste Special for Groups of components. Use the Advanced Reference collector. It's handy for placing hardware, etc. Bolt, multiple washers and nut can be placed with 2 or 3 picks depending on whether or not grip is uniform. Again, I've wondered if that, essentially, duplicates assembly UDF's (I don't have AAX, can't create them).