Thanks for all the help. There is divided opinion over this, so I have
posted all the responses (and my reply to Son) for reference.
We have definitely seen the parameter table fail to update correctly when
the tool name contains a hyphen, but strangely it is not consistent (ie
doesn't always fail to update the parameter table correctly). So it would
appear that it does affect the program even without user defined relations
involving the tool name.
We have renamed our tool library eliminating all hyphens.
Regards
Steve
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Original question
I was reading the help files and came across the statement:
The tool name (Name) is used throughout Pro/NC to identify the tool. You can
store the tool's parameters in a text file and then retrieve it to use in a
different manufacturing process. Name serves as the name for this parameter
file, therefore, all the operating system's restrictions for file names
apply to Name (for example, it cannot contain spaces or periods). The name
must be less than thirty-two alpha-numeric characters long.
Note: The tool name cannot contain hyphens (-). Underscores (_), however,
can be used.
In our ignorance we did not know this and virtually all our tool names
contain hyphens. Has anybody had any problems with this? Why I ask is that
we get the odd anomaly happening from time to time and never been able to
tie it down to something. We are using WF2.
_____
Yes the hyphen does affect the manufacturing. I ran into a problem with
naming my taps 0_5-13 and there was a strange behavior in the parameter
table. I logged a call with PTC on the problem and they showed me that it
was the hyphen was what was giving me all the problems.
Son
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My reply to Son
Thank you for your quick response. We have had spurious results which were
sometimes unrepeatable and sometimes could be repeated. These could easily
be linked to this as most actions out of NC packages start with a parameter
table entry somewhere along the line. We will redefine the tool library.
When we ran 2001 (Pre wildfire) we had no trouble and it was only when we
went over to WF that it all started.
_____
His reply to me
I started the tool database in WF1 and did not realize the problem was until
WF2. All the times that it would act up I would just bypass it and thought
that it was a bug. But now that I fixed the names for tools Pro has been
working great on tools. I am on WF4 and hopefully by the end of this year go
to WF5.
Son
_____
I did not know it was documented anywhere but yes, I have had troubles
caused by this.
The main problem I encounter is when using relations, anytime you reference
CUTTER_DIAM for example, the relation will update to reference the TID:
(Tool ID or name) and if you have hyphens in the name it is considered a
minus sign.
-Bryant-
_____
Hyphen it is a valid characters on windows / unix o/s so you should not have
any trouble...
Daniel
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We have had problems, specifically with tapping. (as we initially used the
-). Some parameters were not read correctly. Changing to the _ fixed the
issue we were having.
Bill
_____
Having hyphens in tool names and feature names is apparently OK for the
majority of work (we have many tool names with hyphens), but there are
situations where it could theoretically be interpreted as a "minus" sign in
calculations (relations) that use the tool's parameters.
If you are using relations to define NC sequence parameters, you might run
into this. However, you should be able to use the "Feature ID" number
instead of the feature "name" as the FID portion of the reference which
avoids the issue altogether.
Dave
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