If I needed one day to create one drawing then I would end up drinking only salt water.
I am just kidding. 
Great job Antonius. It's hard to figure out all the how-tos with Creo.
I don't know the requirements for your drawings. Can't think of anything so horribly complicated so it would take one day to create. Maybe some sort of huge assembly with lots of explode states.
I understand the question, Brian and I had not expanded on this line of thinking.
In general, I can throw a sheetmetal design on a shop and I always get what I want because is design to general shop tolerances. No issues. Just let them know the material, how to finish it and what fasteners to use.
Since there are no standard shop tolerances for turned and milled parts, you need something to go by when inspecting parts. I work with many shops that can do runout precision to .0001" and often require certified compliance. These shops get paid very well so you can understand when a batch of parts get rejected. Someone is going to be pointing fingers. Therefore, the drawing satisfies the "legal" requirement.
And technically, the ASME Y14.41 will hold up to legal scrutiny. What the last supplier I talked to told me is that they are not investing in all the various CAD systems and terminals for the inspection teams. The shop floor too wants paper in hand. Again, yes, Y14.41 will cover this... but they are not interested (and I mean adamantly!). These are some of the best shops in the pacific northwest.
I can also say that I've worked with a couple of dozen mechanical engineers worth their salt that have no clue what ASME Y14.41 even is. I can just see forcing them to make a compliant model. Their productivity would drop to zero. I would love to land a contract using model annotation as required output. Then this thread would grow exponentially! And my tech support count would follow
I am glad that this thread has grown so many tentacles. At least it is all in one place.
And yes, Creo 2.0 is still unstable. I have all kind of weird things happen out of the blue. My command finder completely ignored me last night. Had the system crash on a Revolve diameter change (I think is choked when I had a "Global Interference" open in another window). When I rebooted Creo, it changed the diameter just fine. I also had GTOL move around on the drawing when I supressed a completely unrealted feature in the model.
By the time your team moves up to Creo 2. ...6 or so, most of this will be ironed out. 
By the time your team moves up to Creo 2. ...6 or so, most of this will be ironed out.
Yeah, unfortunately, this is very true. I've never been able to work on the bleeding edge of PTC software because I've always worked for companies that needed stability. When I worked at Amp Incorporated in the early 90's, for a time we had one of the largest installations of Pro/E in the world at 900+ seats. Even then, we were always a rev back because each new revision brought enhancements... but also uncertainty.
Now, twenty years later, I'm jumping through hoops to get my people onto Creo 1.0 because we just can't go to 2.0 yet. I read either on a thread here or on one of the PTC/User email exploders a message from a PTC rep stating "there's no reason not to go directly to Creo 2.0 immediately". When I read that... I cringed.
I've said numerous times that I feel a shift in the way PTC is dealing with customers, handling problems, and honestly trying to hear constructive criticism to better their products and services. I truly believe this to be the case. However, when I hear a statement that "there's no reason not go directly to Creo 2.0 immediately", it brings back memories of the "bad old days" when PTC seemed tone deaf and clueless about the software's shortcomings.
I'm glad we're making progress... but someone hasn't gotten the memo that we're supposed to be starting a new period of honesty and transparency with customers. Honesty means saying "Hey, Creo 2 is amazing for several reasons... and we're working to iron out some problems first adopters have discovered".
Thanks for working through these problems Antonius... it's early adopters like you that help vet the software and iron out the problems for the rest of us.
Take care...
-Brian
Antonius, I feel your pain. To me, GD&T in Pro/e has always been a total pain in the dingoes kidneys ( ). What I did was create a symbol to allow me to show the "plunger-style" (hate the new standard) datum.wherever I want. Now, keep in mind it's a symbol, and as such is not parametric, but it works well. You can attach it "o entity" on a dimension leader line, or do a tangent or normal leader, and has variable text (as you can see I cna make as many datum "A" symbols as I want since it's not tied to an actual datum. I made th esymbol text size dependent for our .15625" text, but you can modify it if needed. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Ha! Now all I have to do is figure out how to make symbols
Appropriate use for the datum tag is to hang it from your GD&T feature control symbols when available. Since I make GTOL from notes (@[ etc @]) I don't think this work using the "move to GTOL" feature of the datum tags and you can't just hang the triangle in space (or can you?). If I made the symbol, I would probably only make the triangle with a tail and "float" a text string note for the datum itself.
(I can just see PTC developers turning in their graves with these comments 
).
I was drawing sketched lines to make draft datums. Sometimes the datums would remain attached to the drafting sketch lines and other times if would not (when moving views, for instance). The line would move with the view and only sometimes would the datums move with. The creation of draft datums has a really weird pick sequence. I use the lines for reference and I could not get a consistent "click pattern" to get it to prompt for the datum name.
Well, here is what it looks like.
I found a couple of useful things along the way that may help if you decide to use or try it. I found two ways to create it. The first is to create the FCF, attach the draft datum, and then attach the FCF to a dimension using the dimension elbow option. The other is to add the FCF without the datum symbol to the dimension using the dimension elbow option and then add the datum symbol. If you add the FCF using the dimension option Creo will tell you you need to attach the datum symbol to a dimension which for a draft datum isn't an option.
I also got the draft datum selection to work consistently for the on entity selection. I took a look at the messages to see what was happening and found Creo considered my point selections as coinsident. I haven't figured out exactly what I did to get two other options that worked. I hit some key and/or mouse combination that moved me through the dialog but can't get it to work consistently. Anyway the consistent way I found is to select the selection items pick box to activate it. Select the edge you want the draft datum on and select OK on the dialog box or MMB to define the start point. Next, use RMB to get a menu that will allow you to pick the second reference so you can pick a point for the end point and select OK or MMB. The next thing you should see pop up is the name dialog for the datum.
I keep hearing mouse clicks have been reduced but some of the very basic ones that are used daily have added at least one or two. Maybe it's because I don't use mapkeys much or took the time to customize but this operation added three clicks to what was select point, select point, enter name in WF5.
NEW TRY:
Looking at it again I found the mouse selection: pick box in dialog, LMB on entity, MMB for start point, move mouse to to new point on same entity then RMB, LMB on entity, MMB to select second point. If all goes well you should get the datum name box.
I did try the draft FCF verses model. It got quite maddening to keep them straight.
The prompt line needing more lines is kind of silly. I had noted this before. Your tip about the MMB was the missing link.
A little more playing with it last night noted that the draft datum planes, when attached to daft entities, are parametric. To maintain this parametric relationship, you cannot manipulate the draft datum (or at least very restricted) or the datum disassociates from the entity and gets "stuck" to the page.
...and 
you can't change the text style of surface finishes! No thickness and no font options. Back to faking it.
Patriot_1776 definitely an ace Antonius... but he tends to fly below the radar (unless there's a thread debating the ribbon menus 
)
Hah! And on the ribbon debates, I'm like the "chaff" deployed by aircraft to fool RF-guided missiles!
Thanks guys, I've wanted to do that for a long time, and finally when we started using the '94 ASME spec with those Godawful "plunger" datums I finally made a symbol. It seems to work pretty well. Now I cna add datums wherever I want with no hassle.
In fact, what I'd really like to do, is create an entire library of non-parametric or semi-parametric symbols to replace the standard GD&T since it's such a pain to use. I did this in the mid-'80's in AutoCAD, no reason why I couldn't do it for Pro/E.
