Creo 3.0 Creating different drawings from the same model

[lorrainequinn]

Hello people,

I hope someone can help. I am a newbie to PTC Creo but have 25 years experience with Solidworks, Inventor and Catia.

I have recently created a 3D model and 2 drawings from that model. The drawings are different in that the first is a fully detailed drawing for manufacture and the 2nd is a drawing with only some basic dimensions that is being used for quotation purposes.

I took the fully dimensioned drawing and done a 'save as' and deleted some dimensions, tolerances and views from the saved drawing. Now when I go back to the original fully dimensioned and detailed drawing there are dimensions and tolerances missing and even the decimal places have changed to that of the 'save as' drawing.

I believed that these two drawings would be fully independent of each other even though they use the same model 😞

I have also found the same issue when creating different drawing from models created in Family Tables even though the referenced model in each drawing is a different instance.

Can any gurus out there please please help a very frustrated designer

[dgschaefer]

Creo saves the dimensions created in the drawing in the model file.  This is so that you can embed model dims and parameters in created dimensions, drawing GTOLs, etc.  So, if you delete dims from a drawing you are deleting them from the model file and they will disappear from any drawings made from that model. 

Two ways to handle this:

1. You can use the "Erase" function instead of "Delete".  This removes it from the drawing but leaves it in the model.
2. Set the config option "create_drawing_dims_only" to "yes" (the default is no). This will store dimensional information in the drawing, but will limit some of your ability to embed dims and parameters, particularly model dims and parameters, in dimensions, GTOLs and maybe notes.

To recover what you lost, you may be able to open an older model version from disk  that still has those dims in it.

[StephenW]

Doug's suggestions are valid.

I need this same drawing structure. I handle this slightly different.

I create an assembly and I assemble the 3d model (part or assembly) in to the new assembly (i usually use the same drawing number as the filename). What this does for me is it lets me create different x-sections and add any superfluous data or models to the sales/quote drawing to make it good for sales.

This eliminates the "same drawing dimension issue". I find it faster than the save-as method simply due to the excessive  reformatting of the detail drawing that usually doesn't lend itself to a sales drawing.