Title Block Prompts

[verge]

Is there a way to prompt the user to enter title block information (through a dialog box - similar to what's displayed during a pause in a mapkey)? Our engineers are still very much caught up in AutoCAD world - we're still transitioning to Pro-E.


I guess things like clicking inside of a cell are a bit too difficult : ).


It would be nice, though, to be able to prompt for all of the necessary information, thus ensuring thateverything's there.


By the way, I just looked up "ensure" to find out what differentiates it from "insure", and the definition actually said: "To make sure or certain; insure." Whatever...

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

CREATE PARAMETERS TO YOUR START.PRT AND DESIGNATE...


The next time you create a part using Start.prt as a template, you will get a form to be filled in.


As for the drawing... Create a Format with FIXED parameters like, company name, sheet number etc....


Create templates using the format and put in the parameters...preceeded by"&"


The values will be automatically filled in from the ACTIVE part.

 

[jraquet]

VERGE,


You can also add items like this to the forms also. If you have a standard ABCDE/A0.... form you can fill in the table with pointer variables (with appropriate names) and you will be queried for these values if they are not explicitly defined in the model.


For example, if you want to include a heat-treating process to the drawing you can put &HEAT_TREATMENT in one of the box and the system will ask you to:


"Enter text for the parameter "HEAT_TREATMENT"[NONE]:


presently [NONE] is the default value, you can enter another to overwrite the existing value and it will be placed in the table to replace the variable name.


This is especially useful for drawing format variables not assigned to the part:


SHEET {1:&current_sheet} OF {3:&total_sheets} will give


SHEET 1 OF 1 for the sheet number and when you generate additional sheets these variables will be changed to match your present status.

 

[Jonathan21409]

I'm having issues with adding revisions to the title block and am wondering if there is a way to prompt the user who makes the revisions with what to enter. I tried adding the parameters to my format but those disappear once you enter through them once and don't show up anymore. I am curious if theres a way to auto fill in the revision text or atleast make it automated so that the user just has to enter the text that it specifies.


I've given some thought into creating a mapkey for a revision that would prompt the user to fill in the required text at each point but I feel that isn't the easiest way of solving this problem.


Would this problem by resolved by making parameters in the part such as:


Revision01, Engineer01, date01, reason01


Revision02, etc.


And then just referencing those in a table created in the title block? but then agian thats requireing the person to go back down to the part lvl and if its just adding a dimension to the drawing file it really isn't adding a revision to the part.





View attachment 3957


Thats how autocad does it and I'm trying to get something to resemble that in pro-e but not quite sure if its possible.





Thanks for any help

 

[SRINIVASANIYER1]

Refer to the post above....


There are however different ways of controlling revision. You can also externalise the drawings to say PDF format with Date STAMP.

 

[Jonathan21409]

I put all the parameters in the part and in the drawing format however there are instances where you only update the drawing and not the part itself and thats where I would want to put all of the information in the drawing table rather than having it reference theparameters in the part since your not always updating the part when you dodrawing revisions so theres no point in opening up the part in order to update the parameters to show your drawing updates.

 

[looslib]

Are you controlling your files with a PDM system? That will change the parameter names needed in the titleblock. You can use drawing parameters by putting a :d at the end of the parameter name to pick up the drawing parameter instead of the model one.

 

[verge]

Thanks to Jeff and Ben and Srini. This has been very helpful.


Ben, we're about to implement a PDM system (should be installed next week). We've been having compatibility issues, and I'm not going to feel confident about it until it's up and running. So, we may not even use these techniques, but we have some example formats and start parts stashed aside now in case the PDM system gives us troubles. This is good info anyway for anyone here on the forum.


It really shows just how much work goes into developing these PDM systems; it's not easy to figure this stuff out, and PTC doesn't exactly bend over backwards to explain this stuff.


Thanks again everyone...

 

[Jonathan21409]

There is no PDM system currently. I changed all the drawing specific things to use &revision1 &engineer1 etc. format, but the problem i run into with doing that is whenI go to create a new drawing for each part thenI have tochange all of those parametersto stringssoI can edit them later. Now if I enter them all into the parameter list in the drawing file and I dont enter anything in for them as soon as I create the drawing they are all lost. So in order to keep them while not being filled in I need to do it the first way where I define them as strings as soon as I create each new drawing. I made a mapkey to just pick sting and then hit enter to get through the whole list of parameters, but there has to be a better way of doing this without having to use a mapkey to get through all these prompts.


I've also was able to accomplish this by having all of these parameters in the start part but then that ties them to the actual part and not the drawing which is what I don't want to have happen since not all drawing revisions are reflected in the part, aslo if its used in seperate projects it may not need revision for the next project.