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jnelson14-Alexandrite
14-Alexandrite
March 1, 2010
Question

Sketcher Intent Manager

  • March 1, 2010
  • 55 replies
  • 15381 views

During a recent PTC/USER Technical Committee meeting we had a discussion about the Sketcher Intent Manager.

This discussion made me curious as to if there are still users that find the need to turn off the Intent Manager, which is why I am writing.

If there is anyone that still turns off the Sketcher Intent Manager, can you please respond to the questions below?

1. What are the circumstances that causes you to turn off the Intent Manager?

2. If you are importing data, is this done as a "normal" sketch with the intent to drive geometry with that sketch, or as a cosmetic sketch where you are probably not looking to drive geometry?

Please note that the reason of "Because it is annoying", is NOT specific enough.

In order to present the need for this, I need specific use cases (models and/or written) in which users turn off intent manager and still want to do something non-cosmetic with the resulting sketch.

Thanks....

Joel Nelson

PTC/USER Sheetmetal TC Chair


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55 replies

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wattsteam1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010
Hi Joel,

Please do not let PTC disable this feature.

I have been a ProE user since 1993 and found the transition to Wildfire extremely difficult. The sketcher intent manager was one of the key difficulties, and despite two paid training/orientation sessions I still did not get a satisfactory grasp on using it, largely because of the way it was taught. The main problem I have is that I design primarily plastic parts and frequently need to sketch low angles (ie less than 5 degrees). After a few weeks constantly struggling to fight the intent manager changing these carefully constructed angles to 90 degrees, I gave up and just turned it off. This has been how I have been able to maintain productivity with ProE. If I had to fight with intent manager all day I would have a huge productivity loss. Before you say "just use draft tools" I would say you obviously haven't designed complex plastic parts - many can NOT be done with the draft tools alone.

Best regards Jeff Dayman
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bkurth10-Marble
10-Marble
March 2, 2010

Hi,

I disable the Intent Manager in order to access the Adv Geometry tools to join multiple datum curves into a single curve.

Thanks...Brian

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dgallup1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010

I don't do it very often but once in awhile intent manager just will not accept my sketch and dimensioning scheme. I am usually able to get the same geometry, constraints and dimensions to regen with the intent manager turned off. So please, never remove the ability to turn off the intent manager.

The attached pic is one blend feature that required intent manager to be turned off. Note that the screen shot is just picking the feature and selecting modify. It is a blend feature with 4 cross sections so you are actually looking at the dimensions for all 4 sections at once. I had to turn intent manager off for each each section even though section 2 is exactly the same as section 1 and section 4 is exactly the same as section 3. I did a save & retrieve for the repeat sections.

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brianlynn1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010
It has been a while since I have turned intent manager off, but there were
several models where I needed to import the sketches and the dimensions
were too small to do it within intent manager. Once I got the dimensions
where I wanted them I turn intent manager back on and made sure that the
constraints I needed were there. At that time I was importing in to a
sketch that was directly driving geometry, but I also tried a stand alone
sketch and Pro/E did the same thing.

Brian S. Lynn
Technical Coordinator, Product Engineering
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rreifsnyder15-Moonstone
15-Moonstone
March 2, 2010
Jeff,

You are right in saying that your training must not have been taught correctly. Sketcher intent manager is by far the best sketcher available in a solid modeler. You have as near to complete control as I've seen. If your sketch is snapping to an orthogonal all you have to do is delete the V, or H or other constraint that is holding you in place, then create your own angular dimension. You might need to create a 90 degree dimension first to create a small angle, then delete that and create your small angle dimension. You can also bypass a lot of this by simply making sure that the constraint you don't want doesn't show up while you are "rubber banding" you line. If you still can't get that to work like you want, you can hold the shift key while "rubber banding" hit the right mouse button and a circle will appear around the "H" for instance, release shift and click rmb again. The "H" will now have a line strike through it because you have disabled that constraint for that line. I know this last one sounds a little involved, but if you are truly using it a lot you will get used to it quickly.

That all being said, I am definitely against allowing us to turn off intent manager. I have always strived to fix any features that fail rather than deleting things, and sometimes a sketch can get completely turned inside out in a failure. Turning off intent manager lets me work with the sketch without it automatically regenerating while I try to fix the sketch, I can then regenerate manually and turn IM back on.

Rob Reifsnyder
Mechanical Design Engineer/ Pro/E Librarian
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Mission Systems & Sensors (MS2)
497 Electronics Parkway
Liverpool, NY 13088
EP5-Quad2, Cube 281
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jonfawcett1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010
Jeff,



Here's a tip that's usually not taught. When sketching and it wants to snap
in a constraint (like Vertical), just hit the right button and it will
disable the constraint, allowing you to sketch at a really shallow angle. If
there are multiple constraints showing up during sketching, you can toggle
through them with tab. When the one you want to disable is highlighted,
right click. An additional right click will re-enable them. I find this
method really fast and allows you to sketch anything without the constraints
getting in your way, yet still has all the benefits of intent manager.



Hope this helps.



Jon



signaturecard1


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TimothyField13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
March 2, 2010
You can deselect what intent manager will assume under Sketch; Options; You can deselect any of the constraint types in the Sketcher Preferences Constraints Tab if you are having trouble because of assumed constraints.

Tim Field
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pfariello1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010

I have intent manager off as my default. (config option, sketcher_intent_manager no) I also do not use the preselect highlighter. Maybe I am just an old dog or even the last of my kind, but intent manager was never an improvement for me to switch over to. I use map keys heavily and my sketch sections go very quickly.

I have been using Pro/E since '95. My design work is in surfacing, plastics, sheet metal and electronics packaging. I use top down design with geometry propagated from master models/ skeletons to drive target parts. Even within the master and especially within the target parts sketch dimension are referenced to relative features. I would say the intent manager doesn't really place dimensions as I need them.

On some rare occasions I turn it on, for example the text options in sketch are improved over having it off.

Some of the pitfalls I have seen with intent manger are

* Features that are left dimensioned inappropriate references.

* Dimensions with 100+ place decimal values

* Regen failures that cannot be fixed at all inside intent manager

Just my thoughts,
Regards,

Patrick Fariello
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SteveFowler1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010

Joel

I work primarily in tool design and almost don't remember the last time I turned off IM. I do however disable constraints as I sketch.

Thanks

Steve

WF-2 M080 FlexC

Win XP SP-2

Dell PWS 690 3GB Ram

Nvidia Quadro FX4600

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vloos1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 2, 2010
I've been using Pro-e since version 15 around 1996.



I use IM all the time, however on the occasional time a sketch does fail
and it sends me back into the old sketcher resolve mode, I really have
to hunt and search around the menus to find the old routine to get the
sketch to resolve.



That sometimes scares one as to lost techniques since IM came on board.



Vinson Loos
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