Vanishing depth symbol for non-tapped hole callouts?

[_DF_]

This is sort of a style nitpick, but it's also weird.

Creo appears to use a couple different parameters based on the type of hole. As far as I know, if you have a hole, and you're using a callout instead of dimensioning it directly via a section view or similar, the hole depth should have the little depth symbol in front of it. It's something like ctrl+a x (or SHIFT-X if caps lock is on) ctrl+b if you need to generate it manually, but the symbol shouldn't be there if it's a THRU hole.

So your parameters VAR_DEPTH and DRILL_DEPTH (and VAR_THREAD and THREAD_DEPTH for tapped holes) return the depth symbol and the hole depth respectively for holes with a specified depth, and nothing and THRU for through holes. Piece of cake.

Well sort of. As far as I can tell for drilled or clearance holes things work differently. Clearance holes don't even have an option to be a specified depth (although there is an option for them to stop at a feature), so I'm not overly concerned about those. However for drilled holes DRILL_DEPTH is still either VAR or THRU, but VAR_DEPTH always returns with no symbol. In fact, if you place callout formulas with identical conditions except for DRILL_DEPTH in your .hol table on top of each other, Creo will always pick whichever one is first- it's not even looking at DRILL_DEPTH even if it's a parameter in the callout table and shows up in the callout.

Now it just so happens that I have an application where I need to specify a blind, drilled hole and I noticed that the depth symbol dissapeared in that callout but reappeared if I set the type to "tapped" with the same variables. This shouldn't come up too often, but I just recently got my .hol tables working so my machinists don't complain about the style and I don't have to manually generate every single hole callout, and I was hoping I had every callout style covered so I could have them auto-update if changes were made in the model and everything would always be correct. (If you're looking for starter .hol tables there's an old thread on this site with nice examples and a machinist-friendly callout style)

So is this a bug, a feature, me being incorrect about a hole depth always requiring a depth symbol, or me not knowing some hidden variable or config.pro setting that would magically make this better (95% of the issues I've ever had with Creo are because of this)?

If Creo was looking at the DRILL_DEPTH column in the .hol table in the first place it wouldn't even be an issue, because I could change those callouts to always have the depth symbol instead of using VAR_DEPTH.

Edit: I should mention that the new callout provides the drill size normally used to make that diameter hole along with the diameter.

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[TomU]

As you noticed, VAR_DEPTH and VAR_THREAD display either or "THRU" depending on the hole/thread depth.

As far as I can tell these only function for threaded holes. Turn the thread off and they both go blank. I think this might have something to do with the default callout being the same for all holes, regardless of type or options. The out-of-the-box callout format is always:

&METRIC_SIZE &THREAD_SERIES - &THREAD_CLASS &STD_HOLE_TYPE &VAR_THREAD &THREAD_DEPTH

&NUMBER_SIZE DRILL ( &DIAMETER ) &VAR_DEPTH &DRILL_DEPTH -( &PATTERN_NO ) HOLE

Counterbores, countersinks, and exit countersinks are never called out either.

I've had a case open with PTC for almost a year now requesting documentation on VAR_DEPTH and VAR_THREAD. Still waiting...

[_DF_]

My machinists hated the default callout format so I've been messing with the hole tables.

That whole first line is only necessary for tapped holes, any other kind of hole they just want the hole diameter, drill size, and depth. Like I said, there's a thread on these forums with some really good starter .hol tables.

I ended up making a second set of .hol tables, UNF/UNC-NOPATTERN identical to my UNF/UNC replacements but with the pattern parameters deleted. If you change THREAD_SERIES to UNF/UNC in the .hol files you won't end up with "4-40 UNC-NOPATTERN etc" all over the place and you can have a couple different callout styles.

Just make sure your config.pro is pointing somewhere that won't get deleted the next time you upgrade Creo and your .hol files are all in there.

This doesn't work if your config files are all standardized of course, but in that case hopefully someone already changed your defaults so the callouts are usable anyways.

Incidentally, as I stated before VAR_DEPTH and VAR_THREAD either return the depth symbol or nothing. DRILL_DEPTH and THREAD_DEPTH return either the depth value or "THRU". If you replace "VAR_DEPTH" with "<ctrl-a>x<ctrl-b>" in a .hol file you always get the depth symbol and the depth but if it's a THRU hole you get "depth symbol THRU" which also looks wierd and is probably wrong. If VAR_DEPTH was the parameter returning "THRU" then you'd get "depth symbol" and nothing else- try it yourself if you can!

What you can do is open a .hol file using notepad or similar and save a copy into the same folder using the "all files" option (otherwise it gets saved as a .txt file and Creo won't recognize it) and a filename like "UNC-TEST-UNOFFICIAL-DO-NOT-USE.hol" and play around with that file without fear of breaking your real .hol tables.

So anyways, it's confirmed that the behavior isn't limited to my box, and that someone either intentionally or unintentionally turned off "VAR_DEPTH" for non-tapped holes. I'm pretty sure that's means the reulting automated callout for a blind untapped hole will ALWAYS be wrong to the point of conflicting with your ANSI/ASME Y14.5 standard of choice?