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cschmid_1908671-Visitor
1-Visitor
August 30, 2019
Question

Layers and Rules... Rule base layers.

  • August 30, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 6144 views

I am working to try and improve my companies Creo start parts and configuration.  One thing that annoys me terribly is the terrible Layer Scheme.  Engineers don't even bother using layers and the result is that I have to work with a spaghetti mess of datum planes, axes, and csys.  The layers are set by configuration option instead of by rules and I believe if they were set up by rules and easy to understand and use they would be much more manageable.

Does anyone have any Creo Parts with Layer Rules they would like to share for ideas?  I remember working for a company that had an excellent rules scheme for layers.  I know there is no absolute best way for setting layer rules, but I would like to see some examples from the community to help make rules that are sensible and easy to understand.

2 replies

K
21-Topaz I
kdirth21-Topaz I
21-Topaz I
August 30, 2019

I don't know that our layers and rules are the best, but we are strongly encouraged to stick to the standard layers found in the start parts and the layers file.  As far as rules, I have suggested we change our rules to look by feature as this will hide the feature in the tree, allowing it to be shown from the model tree without unhiding it in the layer tree.  He is a snapshot of our layers and a rule.

rules.jpg

P
Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
22-Sapphire II
September 3, 2019

"Default" layers are the suck.  Rules-based layers are the way to go.  The rules are a little quirky and sometimes don't work as they should, but you can get them to do a lot of neat things.  If they'd fix the bugs and make it possible to to true conditional statements for the rules, they'd be a lot better, but still they're pretty effective.  ALSO, the awesome thing about them is that you can fix parts that don't have the proper layer structure.  See the attached presentation I found here many years ago.  This helped me set up the layer structure I use.

 

Best of luck!

C
Chris321-Topaz I
21-Topaz I
September 3, 2019

A downside to rule based layers which is not mentioned in the presentation is that they can be a performance hit for large assemblies.

 

We use rule based layers as well but ours are very simple. It would be prudent to do some testing on your end to make sure that there isn't a significant impact if you implement them.

    M
    MM_7162563-Newcomer
    3-Newcomer
    March 9, 2023

    If rule based layers have the associative checkbox checked then there will be a performance hit every time the assembly is regened. If the box is unchecked, the performance hit goes away. Below is regeneration time testing data with two assemblies each having about 100 parts (times continue to get worse with even larger assemblies):

    Assy #1: Native Creo Config Layers: 5.3", new rule based assoc. layers: 16.4", same new layers set to non-assoc: 5.2".

    Assy #2: Native Creo Config Layers: 2.2", new rule based assoc. layers: 7.7", same new layers set to non-assoc: 2.1"

     

    We are moving to rule based non-assoc. layers for new parts. For existing parts we load the assoc. layer set first to gather all the existing features onto the correct layers and then use a macro to turn off the associativity on all layers before checking-in the part.

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