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MattBarbour1-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 27, 2010
Question

Problems taking sketch to 3d

  • October 27, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 9642 views

Help!! I am a new pro/e'er. I started a new design as a solid part. I spent several hours working on a sketch and before I started to do any 3d work, I had to shut down Pro/E. I saved the work and since it was just a sketch it saved as an .sec. When I open the .sec file it won't give me the option to do any 3d work. I have tried opening a new part and imported the file and I still can't get the extrude tools to work. Super frustrated what am I doing wrong! Please help! Many thanks!!! I am attaching the sketch file in case that helps.


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2 replies

K
Kevin1-Visitor
1-Visitor
October 27, 2010

The problem you have is that it's an open sketch. Select the Highlight Open Ends icon in sketcher to show where the open ends are. Close the open ends using the Corner icon and try to extrude again. The following shows the open ends.New Picture.jpg

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MattBarbour1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
October 27, 2010

Thanks! Unfortunately I actually did just figure that out and i closed the corners and it still won't extrude, when I hit the extrude it doesn't highlight the check so I can't start the function. It won't select the sketch no matter how I try to select, the placement tab is highlighted red? I am losing my mind over this! Any other idea's, thanks!!

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BrentDrysdale12-Amethyst
12-Amethyst
October 28, 2010

Hi Matt,

Welcome to ProE. There is a lot to learn so just ask away.

I have attached a PDF which I made to explain this to you. After 15 years of using ProE I needed to do this myself just recently and had to ask my VAR after spending time trying to figure it out for myself. The trick is to get into a sketch in your new part then import your .sec file into that. Hopefully the PDF gives you enough info to do this. Note that you have some variables when you import it such as sometimes needing to rotate the sketch to align with what you are sketching on in your part and also you can vary the scale of the imported sketch (I have only used 1:1). Note that I am using WF5 but it is similar in WF4 and I never tried it before then.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Brent Drysdale

J
JonathanHodgson13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
November 1, 2010

Hi Matt,

Good to see that your problem is resolved this time, but when I saw your post I could spot the real cause in eight words: "I spent several hours working on a sketch".

No sketch in Pro/E should take more than a few minutes. Good modelling practice in Pro/E is to use many, simple features rather than one complex one; a simple guide is that a sketch should have no more than about six entities or dimensions. As with everything this is a guideline not a rule, but it's a good guideline.

Depending on what you're doing, you should either build up your model (casting / moulding) from simple shapes, or cut it away (machining) from a simple 'blank' - or sometimes a mixture of both. Features such as grooves, slots, holes, ribs, pockets, chamfers, rounds should all be added individually, and late (the smaller / less important the feature, the later you add it). As you add later features, you can reference major surfaces (or edges, or vertices if it can't be avoided) produced by previous features, so you shouldn't need any duplicate dimensions.

I gather that this is different to some other CAD packages, but it works really well in Pro/E, both for making stable models when you come to change them later (the wonders of parametrics!) and also just to make it easy to find a dimension when you want to change it, or to delete a feature that's no longer needed.

There has been extensive discussion in the PTC/User (http://www.ptcuser.org/) list - if you're not signed up, it's probably worth doing so just to search the archives. Alternatively, maybe some people on here would like to post their lists of 'best practice' - I have a few, but don't want to distribute other people's work.

Good luck!

Jonathan

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