Copy surface by CSYS

[VMcD]

Hey Creo gurus,

What is your best method to copy - move a surface (or quilt) from a CSYS location to another?

Copy - Paste Special - Transformation only allows one DOF at a time. I want to just select an original and new CSYS to place a copy of this surface from CS0 to CS1.

[tbraxton · Accepted solution]

The functionality you want has been moved to the flexible modeling tab. I do not recall when they moved it there. It is now the current implementation of the old surface transform function.

[VMcD]

Thank you, this Move function is the only one I found.

[tbraxton]

Your question reminded me to check on an SPR associated with this topic. It still has not been fixed so refer to this support article. I would appreciate it if you would open a case with PTC and refer to this article since they still have not fixed the Copy Move option in this feature. 

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS353572?source=Case%20Viewer 

[mneumueller]

To achieve what you want to achieve (transform a copy of a quilt based on CSYS alignments), you can use FMX-Move and:

1. select the quilt into the references collector (This is the recommended/best option. Typically you would want to do that for a body as well). That way it is selected as a “quilt-object” and not as a collection of surfaces
• Note: I also have some blog posts that might help with some explanations around this:
  • Multibody - Body selection, Body object vs Surface referencing (https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Parametric-Tips/09-Multibody-Body-selection-Body-object-vs-Surface-referencing/ta-p/820739#M683)

  • : Multibody – How do I >position< bodies? - PTC Community
    (https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Parametric-Tips/Multibody-How-do-I-gt-position-lt-bodies/ta-p/821018#M887%20)

2. If you do select it as a collection of surfaces, then you have to uncheck the “attachment”-option (unless the quilt is a closed quilt in which case it couldn’t attach to anything anyway).

Please have a look at this quick video illustrating the workflows:

Will check with my colleagues to get the article updated.

[S_Edgenear]

@mneumueller 

Could this be improved to allow transforming to a list of several CSYS? Currently we have to redo the same command when we want to copy the same source quilts to several destinations. It would be nice if it worked more like the Instance Geometry in NX5 or NX6. Please see the beginning of this video:

instance geometry (Full Video Tutorial Unigraphic NX6) - YouTube

When the user needs several instanced copies of an original quilt, it only needes to select the source geometry and source CSYS once, then, on the destination, he can click several target CSYS to specify several destinations in a list. I don't know if in NX it works this way, but if Creo would allow this kind of source CSYS to target CSYS list, instead of copying one instance at a time, Creo could leverage the list of CSYS to allow the Reference Pattern work. Currently we can use sketch CSYS to position geometry and pattern using CSYS on the sketch, but all of those CSYS are 2D constrained, only can be positioned or rotated in Z, normal to the sketch. It's a limitation that Creo do not allow this free CSYS to CSYS geometry pattern to a list of destination CSYS. Using Pattern Tables to specify rotation or offset around X, Y, Z works sometimes, but only when we know the angles of the targer CSYS, which is not always the case.

[pausob]

@mneumueller , just highlighting couple of issues for future-improvement consideration:

1) to copy a surface, users have to start the "move" tool, and then activate the "hidden" copy option.

Consider renaming the tool to make it easier for new users to discover the copy function, e.g. in MS-excel, when right-clicking on the sheet in a workbook:

2) it is bizarre that the "origin" coordinate system has to be included as an object to be moved when the intent is to only move/copy the geometry.  Again, this detail is not something that is easy to discover on your own.

3) I suppose as a consequence of (2), the flexible-move-copy procedure produces (an unwanted) situation of having two coordinate systems on top of each other --> ++clutter and confusion for future users of the model

[S_Edgenear]

I was about to mention also the cumbersome aspect that to copy quilts or bodies using the FMX one has to include the CSYS as an object to copy (or move), which is not at all expected or intuitive. I didn't mentioned since we are not using the latest Creo version yet, so I was unsure if the behaviouur / bug had already been changed. The need to include the source CSYS does not make sense, and as pointed out it will create another one overlapped in the destination CSYS. So, currently the funcionality exists, but is kind of hidden, and the user interface needs some improvements to speed up common tasks (copy to several target CSYS) and to allow easier discovery of the functionality for new users.