Tue 2/8/2000 Tip #5

Since I have been so busy the last few weeks I have missed the last tip time so this tip you get two.  Thank you to all that have submitted tips and thank you all for signing up.  Pass the word.

This week’s first tip comes to us from Dave Murray at CADimensions Inc in NY, USA

dave@cadimensions.com

HIDING AND SHOWING SKETCH IN A DRAWING

Hiding and showing sketch geometry is independently controlled between a part and its associated drawing. What this means is if you show a sketch in a part, it will not automatically be shown in the drawing. Furthermore, sketch visibility can also be controlled independent of views in a drawing. If you right click on a sketch in the Drawing Feature Manager, you can show it in that specific view only, giving you a sketch, which may aid in adding reference dimensions. This is extremely beneficial when dimensioning ellipses or spline points.

This week’s second tip comes to us from Stan Heeres at DB Union Pumps in MI, USA

sheeres@netscape.net

ASSEMBLY FEATURE

When creating Assembly Features, the default Feature Scope includes EVERY Component in the assembly. This greatly increases the rebuild time because every part must be evaluated during EACH rebuild. This becomes especially important the more Features that are in the Assembly.

To avoid this, after building the first Assembly Feature, right click on the feature, click on Feature Scope and remove all components except those affected. Make sure to do this after the first Assembly Feature or you will have to individually delete each component from the list for EACH Assembly Feature. After doing this on the first feature, all following features will have ONLY those Components in the list that were in the previous Assembly Feature list. Simply edit the Feature Scope each time an Assembly Feature is created. This has cut the rebuild time on the assembly we are working on by 50%!