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TomD.inPDX17-Peridot
17-Peridot
June 22, 2012
Question

Drawings unstable in Creo 2.0?

  • June 22, 2012
  • 7 replies
  • 50010 views

I just completed a very comprehensive machining drawing and I must say that between 2000i and Creo 2.0, the drawing had become seriously unstable.

1st I was dealing with some very annoying graphics artifacts. Ones where simply moving an annotation feature would blank out the feature. More often than not, I would have to regenerate the drawing to get things to unhighlight or come back to a visible state. Seriously annoying indeed!

Then I had whole blocks of dimensions and other features just -move-. They jumbled themselves up left and right generally undoing a lot of careful placement that I was -doing-. It happened sometime between switching to the model and drawing, and poof, I again had to fix a couple of dozen annotation features.

Am I the only one? ...or is this something that has become the norm? Seriously, in 2000i, it was set it and forget it. Now I don't know how people keep from pulling their hair out.

I am on an approved platform with the approved drivers... etc.


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    7 replies

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    BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
    13-Aquamarine
    June 26, 2012

    I'm not on Creo 2.0 yet... but I never jump on brand new software from any company until it's had the kiks worked out a little first. Creo 2.0 was just officially released at M010. Before that it was in what I call "take your chances" mode, release level F000 and F001.

    I'm not saying this is definitely a bug or a problem with Creo 2.0, I'm just saying I prefer not to leap to such white hot new software offerings so soon after their release to avoid such issues. For an issue such as this, you may need to call PTC customer support. Perhaps they're aware of a problem that can be easily resolved.

    Best of luck...

    -Brian

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    TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    June 26, 2012

    I kind of looked at Creo 1.0 as the test bed for 2.0. There is already an update for 2.0 to M010?

    At the moment, I can afford the learning curve and instability. But that won't last too long.

    B
    BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
    13-Aquamarine
    June 26, 2012

    I'd love to hop on Creo 2 but for the kind of organization I work for, we need stability. My choices are to keep us on Wildfire 5 until Creo 2 is out for many months... or hop to Creo 1.0 now. My reasoning for going to Creo 1 now is that at the very least we'll have all our people trained on the new interface now. This should make the eventual jump to Creo 2 or 3 much easier.

    D
    Daves11-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    July 6, 2012

    The artifacts that you are seeing could be a display driver issue with Creo 2.0. See if there is a newer driver for your video card.

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    TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    July 6, 2012

    I updated to M010 since this post and also updated my Nvidia drivers.

    I now have new issues with datums not moving on drawings and planes not following visibility settings when datum tags are attached.

    I seem to remember that GD&T in Pro/E has always been a bit flacky and it seems to continue today.

    B
    BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
    13-Aquamarine
    July 6, 2012

    Hi Antonius...

    Because the weird problems are actually CHANGING as your driver changes, it really seems like a driver issue. Have you tried switching to software graphics to see if that removes the issue? Does your NVidia driver have an optimization setting for Creo (or Pro/E)? Or... maybe a better way to help would be to ask what graphics card you have... that will give us some clue to help us suggest possible fixes.

    Thanks!

    -Brian

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    TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    July 9, 2012

    DAMN! Crashed again moving a datum tag in a drawing. All unsaved data lost.

    -------------------------------------------------
    The datecode is: 2012130
    The pro machine type is: x86e_win64
    The process ID is: 6652
    -------------------------------------------------
    Exception EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION has occurred in the thread 4724.
    Main Thread 4724
    =====================
    0x00000001407502EE NULL (NULL:0) (xtop:0x000000013F150000) ( 0x1e255408, 0x1e255408, 0x7, 0x1ebe1388 )
    0x0000000140707459 NULL (NULL:0) (xtop:0x000000013F150000) ( 0x1e255408, 0x0, 0x3940a440, 0x0 )
    0x000000014070962F NULL (NULL:0) (xtop:0x000000013F150000) ( 0x95dce8, 0x95dd10, 0x2, 0x1e255138 )
    0x0000000140AB064A NULL (NULL:0) (xtop:0x000000013F150000) ( 0x1, 0x329f678, 0x2886d500, 0x1 )
    ...<snip>

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    TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    July 13, 2012

    Just an update on my end. The recent update from NVidia for the 3000M card in my Dell Precision M6600 caused me flash player issues and the Dell tech support had me reload the original driver (almost a year old) which is only 1 generation up from the approved platform at PTC. So I loose all the PTC updates to NVidia as well.

    Having done this, I am now one more drawing further in my pain we call Creo Detailing.

    I finally narrowed down the crash problem with datum tags. It is now in the hands of PTC for resolution.

    I also added a new service call with regard to not being able to change the text style of the datum tags in the drawing (haven't tested model GD&T yet). My customer demands a different font from default and an applied "thickness". The text font cannot be changed at this point and the thickness, when assigned in the model, does not transport to the drawing. in the drawing, you cannot access the datum tag text properties. Rock and a hard place! And on top of that, the axial datum tag text comes out bold while planer datum tags come out with thickness "0.000000" on the screen.

    I have also learned that we cannot fake the appropriate datum tags (triangle leader) on horizontal surface (horizontal in reference to the drawing). If you make this a note, it forces an elbow. This is not allowed by the standards.

    Datum_tags_display.JPG

    ...and I have gleaned that drafting datums and annotation does not generate the new style datum tags. This needs further investigation, but it appears that the symbol above is not even addressed in the drafting GD&T module.

    I should start a blog

    T
    TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    July 13, 2012

    And since I am having so much trouble transporting the model GD&T from the model (crashing and corrupt drawing files), another limitation presented itself in making composite feature control frames in the drawing...

    These cannot be duplicated with the text editor. Remember, I am charged with making "certified" drawings. This means it must meet the standards in -every- way.

    http://communities.ptc.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/2-185349-34533/450-292/composite.png

    ...image compliments of our own Brian Martin.

    J
    James621-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    July 13, 2012

    Ok, I was gonna suggest that you could always try to go define those tags as symbols. That alone wouldn't be too hard.

    But defining every such compound geometric tol as the one shown on Brian's picture would be a huge painfull PAIN.

    Still a way to go.

    If you ask me I would be in AutoCAD after the two first miliseconds just thinking about this.

    Patriot_1776
    Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
    22-Sapphire II
    July 23, 2012

    Well, here's a couple of VERY important rules of thumb:

    1. NEVER use any default datum feature (plane, axis, etc.) as a GD&Tdatum!

    2. NEVER use any default datum feature as a GD&T datum (in case you missed it the first time).

    3. Ok, now that I have your attention, NEVER use the GD&T datum feature as a parent feature for anything.

    The above tips will prevent unwanted parent-child relations.

      J
      James621-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      July 24, 2012

      haha,

      This perfectly sums up all the 8 pages of this thread.

      T
      TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
      17-Peridot
      July 25, 2012

      A new problem cropped up today in detailling. I had already reported this to CS but didn't have all the facts. Today it became clear there is a bug in the presentation of datum tags on drawings. It has something to do with re-associating datum tags to gtol or dims. The text will become bold as it is in the models. It soon resolves itself but for the time being, it is problematic as this does plot with the wrong font settings. This is a screencap of the PDF, stroked font PDF plot output... [B] was moved from the cylindrical surface to the dimension.

      Datum_tag_font_error.JPG

      ...and wouldn't you know it. I tried to move the [B] datum and it crashed all my sessions!

      I think this answers my original question...

      YES, CREO 2.0 DETAILING IS QUITE UNSTABLE!

      M
      MitchJordan1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      August 28, 2012

      We just purchased several license of Sigmetrix GD&T Advisor. It places GD&T symbols using ASME or ISO rules as Annotations. Very cool add-in for Creo!!!

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        BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
        13-Aquamarine
        August 28, 2012

        Yes Mitch...

        I like the GD&T Advisor, too... it's a brand new product that was literally just released a few weeks ago. We demo'ed it where I work. It is a very cool add-in for Creo... but it's important to mention it's $3500 per seat.

        For someone like Tom (Antonius), that's another $3500 to just to force Creo to create annotations correctly. And GD&T advisor doesn't give you the flexibility to show tolerances in all of the different ways specified in the ASME/ISO documents. It gives you compliant GD&T annotations... but if there are two or three variants which are also allowed, it does not necessarily handle all of them.

        We specifically asked this technical point during our demonstration. Right now, you get a compliant annotation... but perhaps not the one you want. When you're trying to adhere strictly to an annotation scheme dictated by your customer, you can't just tell them "Hey sorry but my GD&T tool creates the annotations ONE WAY, I can't change them to the way you're used to seeing them."

        Please don't misunderstand. I am not attacking GD&T Advisor... I like the product. I'm just saying it's not a magic bullet solution to the problem of GD&T in Creo. It helps... but the product is still very new and there's still some room for growth ... some features are still beyond it's capabilities.

        Thanks!

        -Brian

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        TomD.inPDX17-PeridotAuthor
        17-Peridot
        August 29, 2012

        Thanks for the heads up, Mitch and thank you, Brian for your very astute observations.

        I would only add one other question in that does the "advisor" allow you to see their annotation on Creo comparable viewers? And does it show the advisor annotation when the drawing is opened in Creo if they do not have the license. The latter question here is a biggy as PTC has at least seen to it that their extension modules are embedded for use on other seats.

        This very much reminds me of what Draftpak did for Cadkey.

        If I were heavily engaged in tolerance analysis and critical GTOL requirements (more than I normally am), it might be worth the investment. I would also be compensated accordingly so that would be appropriate.

        Today, for the most part, the challenge is getting -my- needs met by the tools I have at hand. My needs are simple compared to the efforts of PTC in Y14.41 and the effort that went into Advisor. I definitely cannot afford even a minor hit to the budget to get what I consider basic drafting tools. But again, I am pleased to see someone interface such a nice little 3D party tool into Creo. Maybe others will be encouraged to build some user friendly UI for the basic Creo package.

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