Idletime "Poll" - Your Pro/E MVFs / MIFs

[jeff4136]

I'm slow. I'm bored. I wanna go outside and play but the weather's nasty.
R&R's not real busy either and I thought it might be interesting, informative
even, to see what others see as Most Valued Features and Most Irritating Features.
My ...


MVF(s, model):
VSS.
In my mind it's the modeling feature that gives Pro/E a legitimate
place among 'high end' modelers.
Copy / Paste Special.
With Advanced Reference collector for duplicating features, and
Move / Rotate for geometry entities.
Import Feature environment / Data Doctor
(having to, regularly, read in STEP and IGES translations).
Tho' sure wish they'd (maybe are / have since WF2) update the UI and
provide better documentation (even providing the basics of surface
geometry definitions without which you're gonna be almost helpless).


MIF(s, modeling):
Messing with my graphics window orientation.
Why must Pro/E ~ever~ take it upon itself to decide I need to be looking
at the model from any orientation / view point other than what I've
explicitly and purposefully established? Can anyone explain the rational
or tell me how to stop it.
Surface control poly-whatever (gon / hedron).
I'd love to be able to see surface CV's in Standard mode. I can see them
in Import Feat environment with the Modify tool. Real deficiency in the,
otherwise, adequate analysis tools, IMO. Am I missing something?


Come on, let's hear 'em. Even easy to knock off Autodesk shills can play.
Solidworks shills, too. They, at least, usually have something of value
to contribute to discussions.

 

[cbenner]

Anything on the 2D drawing side qualfies as most irritating. WF's drawing mode is not much different from when I first saw it back in 1996. Coming from an AutoCAD background, this is like a step backward in ease of use. Especially the dimensioning and ballooning.

 

[shankar_me]

Hi,


I agree with Jeff regarding VSS. Along with VSS, I also like to add swept blend.


Patterning component in assembly is one of thing I like the most here in proe. It really speeds up assembly process in proe. I dont know about solid works but in catia I dont find this feature.


Regards,
Shankar

 

[mgnt8]

MVF- ISDX is great and its constantly improving with each new releasewith surface cv editing in WF 4.0.MIF - Import Data Doctor is now completely fly-out-menu-free in WF 4.0 so that's an improvement but hands down the most trying part of my day is importing & fixing data from other CAD programs.

 

[dgs]

MVF - Skeleton driven top down design. Hands down best feature ever.

 

[Zestje]

WF2:

MVF:
- Almost every function which really works like it's supposed to is a pleasure to use!
- Publish geometry/external copygeometry
- Adding an analysis as a feature to create e.g. special points for dimensioning
- Parametric dependancies automatically updating upon regenerating

MIF: you asked for it ...
- When having a feature suppressed high up in the tree and unsuppressing a dependant feature further down the tree ProE simply unsuppresses the parent feature without asking, then automatically regenerates the whole tree again, destroying whatever change I was working on.
- How ProE creates internal references or simply doesn't remove deleted references from features, so you have non-deleteable dependancies between parts.
- Sketcher somehow getting instable in some sketches with over 5 lines drawn...
- Not being able to set different colours in sketcher for construction lines and normal lines, making it almost impossible to distinguish between them
- Having to click dozens of times to accomplish even the simplest tasks
- Losing changes to exploded views, simplified reps and so on if you use the menu buttons to redefine them instead of right mouse button
- How ProE does NOT warn about lost references, even when regenerating, until you go into a sketch and get the error that references have been lost
- Menus being unintuitive
- ProE not creating all rounds shown in preview during creation and not warning about it. Or losing part of the rounds of one feature when making changes higher up in the tree and ProE not warning about it.
- When adding a dimension generating a dimensioning conflict ProE often shows all other dimensions (to pick one from to delete) except the one you actually want to delete
- ProE redimensioning sketches when e.g. cutting or trimming lines instead of keeping the dimensions I have set myself and simply adding the new ones. Especially annoying when angular dimensions get converted to orthogonal dimensions.
- constraints in mechanism not working the way the should or getting lost (resulting in dragging parts through other parts e.g.)
- As mentioned in the first post in this topic: messing with the graphics window orientation in 3D view as well as in sketcher
- sometimes having to preselect features before functions are available and sometimes not. Why this inconsistency?
- ProE losing some of the references to a single feature in an external copygeometry, when the referenced feature hasn't even changed. (e.g. from 2 edges of a quilt in external copygeometry referenced in a sketch, somehow suddenly 1 of them is lost, although the quilt has not changed in the original referenced part.
- A Drawing view regenerates after changes on every single tab in it's properties, instead of once when I click OK (e.g. when I add a view, then change the displayed orientation, the simplified rep and scale I must wait for regeneration 4 times. Quite annoying when working with large asemblies).

I am somewhat disappointed in ProE. If the functions works like they are supposed to it would be an absolutely fantastic program. The many severe bugs make it just average to me...

In short: I consider every bug, which causes change/loss of geometry or references without telling me very severe, because they can cause unwanted geometry I get the blame for even when I constructed the part perfectly. Now as a 'workaround' I always layer a copy of the original and the modified part on top of each other after doing modifications to check for such phenomena...

Edited: corrected most typos (I hope)

Edited by: Zestje

 

[Jacoolo]

mfv:

*VSS - simple, one of the best Pro\e functions
*assembly tools - simp rep, shrinkwrap, Global Reference Viewer
*top down design tools
*sketcher, specialy refrences window

MIF:

*views creation in drawing - even not worth to mention about that, PTc should take a look how it is done in Catia
*creation of symbols in drawing - I do not understand why - so long - PTC manage this fucntion with awfull pop menu. Specialy manually written path for store directory is a bad joke(XXI century, in Win interface and still I feel sometimes like in DOS)
*reference handling - Reroute tool. I am aware the tool itself is great, but the way it is done in Pro\e does not taste good to me at all. For ordinary user diference between Reroute and Redfine is not noticeable. In my opinion this tool should be included inside feature menu
*VSS and missing reference - You can not replace main trajectory untill You dig in details menu. that is sh*ty. The best would be to have reroute included inside VSS with advantage of VSS interface

 

[jelston]

Zestje, u r more than a LITTLE irritated with Pro/E huh.

Well my list is bigger.

 

[Zestje]

@Jelston:

It's not that bad ...
But if you say your list is bigger, of course I want to see some proof

 

[Guest]

*Just about every feature can be irritating when you have to work on models or assemblies that were built by others. Either they didn't know what they were doing or they just don't care, or they are mad at the project lead engineer and decide to really mess things up. I'm working on one of those types of projects now.


*From what I understand, from others who have used ProE for a very long time, ProE is not a true windows application, but a port from UNIX.


*Resolve Mode. I haven't used it much, and for the most part I can't get to work except to suppress parts or features and redefine constraints in assembly. I've been told the Resolve Mode worked better in earlier versions.