Tips for text

[KevinBradberry]

Here's an open discussion for text and notes in Creo and Pro-engineer.

Add tips and tricks that you know and ask questions that would be a good addition to this topic.

If you know of any previous threads that will compliment this topic please provide us the link.

[Dale_Rosema]

I just realized that John Hodgson talked about it above. Thanks,

[ptc-5156581]

Dear all,

Sorry for push up the topic but i have a similar question on this subject.

I try to find a way for create balloon in a text with using parametric like GD&T.

I find nothing how to do that without use balloon and use related to object.

Any idea ?

Thanks

[BrianMartin]

Hi Sebastien...

Can you draw us a simple image of what you're trying to to. I'm not quite sure from your initial message.

Thanks...

-Brian

[ptc-5156581]

Hi Brian,

I want to get something like that.

Balloon inside a note !

Seb

[ScottWyatt]

I do think you can insert a symbol using a parametric reference, but it has to be created individually, brought into session, and you would need a seperate symbol for each number.

Do you want a balloon note with a free text string or do you want a parametric reference to the BOM? I don't believe we can access the Pro/report parameters outside of the repeat region. Once your BOM changes, the notes will be discrepant.

I would love to be able to have a note like "Find No. &rpt.index.1" or something to that effect. That way we don't have to worry about our notes being wrong or out of order. I realize fixing the index is a possible solution but lets be honest, why can't we access the BOM? The information is there, they just wont let us use it.

[tdowney]

you can create a symbol with an attribute and add it inside your note using the context &sym(balloon) and when you exit note creation, it will ask you to fill in the value of all symbols in the note. If the order isn't right, you can edit the attribute of the individual symbols.

[TomD.inPDX]

PTC is seriously lacking in this regard. Every other package offers symbolic inline "flagging" if you will.

Maybe the "new and improved" detailing package long touted for Creo 3 will address this.

[sdurling]

I think what you are looking for is as follow:

To create the & character in a note, enter &&, example: "Parts A && B" will equal "Part A & B" in a note

Also to enter your note try the following:

this is a note &sym(balloon_no_qty) && &sym(balloon_no_qty) the end

The symbol  (BALLOON_NO_QTY) In the annotations, symbols, custom symbols library would need to created first if it isn't already.

[JWayman]

Hello,

I made a note and saved it for future use. The note looked something like this:

All well and good. However, when I inserted a note from file and selected the note I had saved, this is what came in:

Spot the difference?

The word 'NOTES' is no longer underlined. How can this be?

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

Whilst on the subject, I know how to split up notes using {1:xxxx}{2:yyyy}, etc. so different bits can be formatted differently. However, if I format one of the text segments as Centre Justified, they all change. Likewise if I make just one Left Justified. Is it not possible to have different justifications in a single note?

Thanks,

John

WF4, M220

[ptc-5008082]

No idea about the underline, it just falls off!

For the justification though, if you look at the text style box it is split into 'character' and 'note/dimension'

Stuff in the character area can be applied to individual portions of the note, whereas stuff in the note/dimension area is applied to the whole note - or at least that is my understanding of it (doesn't help you)

Justifications can be applied to individual cells in a table but not lines in a note

[JWayman]

Thanks, Charlotte,

I think I twigged where the underline goes: It is saved as a .TXT file, which is associated with Notepad, and does not support formatting such as underline. I don't know whether using Wordpad might help. I'll have a play one day when I have time.

As far as the Justification goes, shame. It would be good to be able to create notes with varying justification, although the comments above regarding Notepad would probably apply equally.

Ah! Well, never mind...

John

[dgschaefer]

Notepad or Wordpad isn't going to make a difference, unless you are opening the *.txt file in one or the other, editing and saving it. I assume you're creating the note in Creo and saving it out as a *.txt file and then reading it back in.

The *.txt format is 'plain text', so no formatting capabilities at all. You can open a *.txt file in Wordpad, or Word for that matter, and add all kids of formatting. It'll get stripped away, however, when you save it as a *.txt.

The only way that Creo could save the formatting is if it used some kind of text based formatting language like HTML markup or something like that.The curly brackets is something like that but all it does is break up different text blocks so different formatting can be applied, it doesn't appear to actually mean anything specific.

[TomD.inPDX]

That formatting seems to go into some other register in the part/assembly/drawing file. Have you tried to do a copy/paste from within the session for both of your instances? If that works out, you could have a generic note part, similar to symbols. Maybe even a custom symbol library for notes is the answer.

[ptc-5012710]

Creo2 drawing notes image:

Notepad notes image:

Hello Team,

Am just trying to fix the alignment problem with in Annotation->Note

Why two lines are not getting aligned in creo 2 like how in Notepad.

Your ideas will be really helpful.

[Dale_Rosema]

Naveen,

Welcome to the forum. PTC is in the process of creating an editor where "What you see is what you get" per this product suggestion. I am not sure if this is available yet, or if it is going to be in Creo 3.0

Thanks, Dale

http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/2059#comment-7802

[StephenW]

Are you using a font other than the default CREO "FONT"? There are several true type fonts that adjust width based on the letter or symbol therefore you won't be able to line up that kind of text.

The CREO default "FONT" is a fixed width letter so it will align.

I believe this is the same with Microsoft word when using fonts that are variable width.

Steve

[ptc-5012710]

Hello

Dale thanks for the update.

Stephen thanks for your quick response, i am using default font for this text.

Please suggest.

[StephenW]

Unfortunately "ISOFONT" is different from "FONT". It appears to me that your company default font is "ISOFONT". I double checked and "ISOFONT" is a variable width font meaning that the width of each character varies based on that character. So in your note, the "1. " is a different width than " " (three consecutive spaces).

You can verify this by changing from ISOFONT to FONT for this note and they should line up. Unfortunately if your company is strict about the font used, you may have issues with this internally. You can use this example to help them understand why they may want to consider the default font.

I know that many companies don't like the "FONT" because of 1 (one) and I (capital letter i) are exactly the same.

The default font can be changed in the drawing setup file. (FILE, PREPARE, DRAWING PROPERTIES, detail options (change), and look for the "DEFAULT FONT" OPTION.

Steve

[ptc-5012710]

Hello Steve,

I completely agree with you and tried the same. I couldn't convince for other fonts rather i am planning to use as is

Thanks allot for your timely help(your points gave me a convincing reason to say its not possible )

Naveen

[TomD.inPDX]

I have jumped through the hoops of making special little text features to make it appear aligned. Things like a space in superscript is about a half space and so forth. There has to be a better way.

I hope Dale is right that this is addressed in Creo 3.0.

Unfortunately you cannot blank the outline of a table. If you could, you can make your notes using a 2xn table to format your notes.

[kevinb60041]

Naveen,

What we have done here to elimate the offset is to have the note number be a separate line of text.

Thanks,

Kevin

[TomD.inPDX]

I ran into this need just the other day and the solution is again an age-old function within Pro|E.

In order to give a certain portion of the text string a different style, you can do this with the {0:...} function.

This breaks up the formatting and allows you to adjust the size of some text. With this, you can also adjust the starting position of your note strings.

[TomD.inPDX]

Please vote for this idea if you can:

Allow blanking Table outline border

The upper table is attached as a Creo 2 table file.

I have done something similar in a format where I needed one variable in the format and was forced to use a full frame table to "mask" the border.

This can be done with notes in drawings, but the table will constantly be selected when you least expect it.

[dschenken]

Isn't this what tab-stops and word-wrap were invented for? I know tab-stops were available on a Smith-Corona typewriter that was built in the 1960s, so it's not like PTC hasn't had time to catch up. Word-wrap is only available since the early 1980s, so 30 years ago.

[TomD.inPDX]

I remember someone saying PTC has address some of this in Creo 3.0 with a rewrite of the annotation code.

Haven't heard anything since.

[ptc-4075910]

I couldn't change the color of a single word in a note using this same method. What am I doing wrong?

[MartinHanak]

Please upload a picture.

Martin Hanak

[ptc-4075910]

[StephenW]

I just tried it too. I can change other attributes of the text, like size and font but color seems to be all or nothing.

[StephenW]

I think the green text in one of the earlier pages is a highlight color, not an actual text color change.