Sketcher Diagnostics

Have you ever created a Pro/ENGINEER sketch and had the system tell you something was wrong, but you did not know what it was? Well be confused no more!  Four new diagnostic tools have been added to sketcher for improved debug/analysis of common sketching problems:

  Shading closed loops – The area inside entities that form a closed loop is shaded with a predefined color. This clearly shows if you have a closed section or not.

  Highlight open ends – The endpoints of entities that are not common to more than one entity are highlighted. This lets you easily find where those unconnected ends are located.

  Overlapping geometry – Overlapping entities are highlighted. Highlights the problem entities for easy cleanup.

  Feature requirements – Provides a report telling you whether the sketch meets the requirements for the feature in which it is embedded. This is available/necessary in 3D sketcher only and will remind you to create that axis in a revolved section.

Intent Objects as Sketcher References

Are you using Intent References throughout your design and making extremely robust models? In Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 Intent Objects are supported as sketcher references. You can select composite curves and intent chains as sketcher references. As a result there are far more complex and robust relationships between features. You can also select intent chains and composite curves for Use-Edge and Offset-Edge operations. Intent chain modifications are automatically updated in the sketch.

Line Style and Color for Sketched Entities

You can assign a line color and style to sketched entities by right-clicking the entity and selecting Properties. These settings remain with the completed sketch. For some entities you can preset line style and color from the System Colors dialog box.

Exact Expressions

Have you ever run into a rounding error for a calculated value typed into Pro/ENGINEER due to the number of decimal places specified on a dimension? Well, never run into that again!  
 
You can now use the syntax =( ) to force Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 to calculate the precise value of the expression without the need for a relation.

In the Dimension Property dialog box, you can set the expression: =(expression). This expression takes the result of a calculation in the parentheses and displays the exact result on the dimension field. This exact result has the minimum number of decimal points needed to display the dimension in its exact value or to the number of decimal places defined by the configuration option default_dec_places.

Exact values override the number of decimal places currently set globally or locally for the dimension.

For example:
 

• Create a part with a simple protrusion
• In a dimension field type:   =(360/29)
• The value read is 12.413793103448 and the number of digits is set to 12.

To see what would have happened without the =( ), go to the dimension’s properties, set the number of decimal places back to 3 and try entering only: 360/29. 

NOTE: In 3D, the dimension appears with trailing zeros sufficient to show the number of decimal places defined in the dimension properties. In 2D, the display of trailing zeros is controlled by the Detail Setup option, lead_trail_zeros.

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