MBD: Standalone Annotations vs. Annotation Features
In Creo 4.0 one of the significant enhancements was to provide advanced capabilities for standalone annotations of the following types: Geometric Tolerance (GTOL), Datum Feature Symbol, Datum Target and Dimension. In this blog post, I'll provide a little bit of background to explain the differences (up through Creo 3.0) between standalone annotations and annotation elements owned by an annotation feature. Then I'll explain in more detail the enhancements in Creo 4.0 and I'll finish up with some advice on when you might want to consider using either standalone annotations or annotation elements owned by annotation features.What is a standalone annotation and how is it different from an annotation element inside an annotation feature?A standalone annotation is an annotation that is not "owned" by some other feature in the model. These annotations are listed in the model tree under the Annotations node.Annotation elements, by contrast, are owned by another feature in the model. Typically