Hiding DRW callout balloons?

[UdoMin]

Are we able to turn off the bubble around our bill of material call outs?

 Option to put it on a non print layer or hide the bubble.

The parent company we work with is asking us if this was an option in creo.

Or if we could add it to an enhancement request item for future creo drawing release.

We understand how the leader is tied to the circle entity for auto relationships.

But would like to turn that puppy off during times  we need more space for callouts.

[TomU]

You can make your own symbols to use as BOM balloons.  The process is the same as creating custom symbols.

[UdoMin]

Would they still have arrow leader capability along with smart ties to part assembly components?

Some of our item numbers are user populated (Non smart) not all tied to an actual bill of materials.

This guy does go over some creating some custom symbols in a clear video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfp6Igidxs

We are looking at hiding that BOM balloon.

[Chris3]

We have custom balloons that do this. That being said, in order to have the leader there needs to be a circle sketch. To get around this we have just made the circle sketch so small it doesn't show up.

[UdoMin]

We did discuss the circle sketch in micro size-

although the leader follows the path to the circle.

Did you have a setting that holds the leader a marked

distance from the item number text in the custom balloon?

thanks for the reply. 

Aiming for something a bit like these:

[Chris3]

You can change the leader distance to the center of the "balloon". I thought it was min_balloon_radius but I just tried that and I couldn't get it to work so I may be wrong or I just didn't spend enough time to make it work right.

[TomU]

I believe that only controls the circle size of the standard balloon.

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS381958

[UdoMin]

We were thinking of requesting an enhancement request on hiding the

bubble to a no show layer item. Leaving it in place as more of a construction line constraint.

First wanted to throw out a question to see if anyone inquired a similar request.

We have time to wait & see if PTC takes an interest.

We are humble tech pub people who barely model from scratch but take worlds of 3D content 

assemble and explode in  simplified reps for parts & operator manuals.

Along with animating stuff for service & marketing..

https://landpride.sirv.com/COMPACT_DRILLS/3P1006NT/3P1006NT.spin

One day I'll learn how to route some hoses to better show some of the stuff we fake for web site display...

Thanks again for responding.

[TomU]

You really need a circle in the symbol to preserve radial attachment behavior.  The circle size determines how close the leader gets to the center, so it seems like the circle really need to stay larger than the text.  I'm not seeing any good way to hide just the circle.  Using a dot font and setting the circle to near white gets close.  One option might be to pick a color name that isn't used for anything else, and then put this color on one of the pens in the pentable configured to output pure white (255, 255,255).  Unfortunately this isn't possible directly in Creo by just choosing white since RGB values above a certain number (approaching white) will get output as black instead.

 

[kdirth]

In the symbol definition, if you set the leader attachment then shrink the circle, the leader attachment will remain at the original radius.

[TomU]

Wow, yes it does.  Doesn't seem like that should work, but I think that's the workaround right there!

[kdirth]

It is definitely a quirk of the program.  I noticed it while creating and modifying a custom balloon, The leader did not stay on the balloon when I adjusted the balloon size.  Also. I noticed that the miniature balloon circle creates a very small mark on the PDF that is only noticeable when looking for it.

[UdoMin]

We would love to accept these as a temporary solutions.

After reviewing how much companies spend on numerous seats of Creo software

-We think PTC should step up to the plate and offer us some options to ghost the

balloon bubbles for when drawings get into larger assemblies 100+ item call out category.

On another thread we typically change the out of box fonts on the call out numbers to hook the numerical ones.

Our auto hotspot ARI networks web program picks up certain fonts better then others.

It likes the 1's with a hook at the top better than the default "font" 1's... in Creo...

We need to start breaking these down into sub categories. Some of our dealers

love to see all the components on one page.. for the parts book...

This community board is the best..;)

Like kdirth signs off we seem to learn something new in Creo every day.

Thanks again for all the replies.

Regards,

Eric

Land Pride

Salina Kansas

[StephenW]

I just posted this on another thread but it applies here as well:

I would never wait on PTC to solve problems that I can come up with work-arounds for...this is strictly my opinion. PTC prioritizes software releases to new features mostly and only throws in a handful of fixes or feature improvements. Usability is very low on the priority list.

You can make a product idea here https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Parametric-Ideas/idb-p/creoparametric

But if you look at some of those ideas, amazingly good ideas, that are years and years old.

[UdoMin]

We'll check that out when we have some time.

We did get a private message from PTC asking us to accept the 

work arounds as a solution. So we can see that they are watching these threads

for enhancement ideas.

This tech pub pup is sort of a squeaky wheel that hardly stays in his lane.

We are those creative people that birth ideas every minute of the day.

But as the day moves on duty calls & we gotta crank out more work for those shareholders...

At the top of the food chain.

We'll be patient and see if they take an interest in some of those product enhancement ideas.

In the meantime we'll take a peak at the https://community.ptc.com/t5/Creo-Parametric-Ideas/idb-p/creoparametric

you posted above...

All we need is infinite amounts of time to learn more stuff about the inner workings of Creo..

Or as our grandparent used to say:

We figured it out by calculating a path to the moon in less than real time...

Happy friday!

Kind regards,

Eric

[TomU]

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@UdoMin wrote:

We did get a private message from PTC asking us to accept the work arounds as a solution. So we can see that they are watching these threads for enhancement ideas.

---

Those are just the community moderators contacting you.  They are completely separate from the PTC product managers who actually make decisions about the product.

[StephenW]

Just to be clear, the PTC Community management has requested you accept a solution. This is different than the PTC Product managers who are responsible for deciding what gets updated. The community management side wants a solution so if someone else searches for the same problem and finds your post and it has a "solution", that lends credibility that it may be their solution also. Generally, to get the attention of a PTC product manager, you need to post an "idea" to improve the software. The idea can be voted on by the community to help PTC product managers see value in the requested functionality.  There is some product manager communication within the ideas forum so you know they look. BUT, from my experience, don't expect anything to happen, again...this is my opinion and not anyone elses.

[UdoMin · Accepted solution]

Stephen,

We'll probably accept your post as a solution knowing that it'll take time for the actual solution to move through all the layers we deal with while working for a huge organization. It's no biggie. We continue to march on & are grateful for our internal developers that work more closely with PTC to work out all the bugs in new software releases. We are always pushing the envelope in our tech pub department. They tell me "the mouth" to stay in his lane quite often.

At the end of the day even if we need to take our goods thru many other software vendors to get an end product PTC is only a small piece the puzzle of software people we deal with on a daily basis.