quickly open drawing

[wakeboarding77]

Is there a way to quickly open a drawing of the part you have on screen?  Seems silly to have to actually go find the drawing to open it.  would be nice if there was a button or mapkey.

Creo 4.0 and Windchill

[KenFarley]

No. For the reasons I gave in this discussion:

Drawing/Model relationship discussion

In brief, there's nothing stored in a part that identifies "the drawing". A part can, in fact, be used in multiple drawings and a drawing can have any number of associated parts/assemblies.

[StephenW]

There is a discussion here https://community.ptc.com/t5/Part-Modeling/Creo-2-0-Open-a-drawing-from-active-part/td-p/260926 where a user made an autoIT script to open a drawing from the part IF the drawing has exactly the same name as the model.

As Ken says, there is no out of the box functionality for this.

[wakeboarding77]

I saw that and tried it but we use Windchill and I could not get it to work.  I am new to Creo, used NX for past 20 years.  I am having a hard time with the inefficiencies of creo compared to what I am used to.

[StephenW]

Step 1, you'll have to forget how things are done in NX, that comparison will drive you bonkers. Some of concept stuff still applies but the actual work is pretty different.

It's a very different software. I used NX a little and SDRC IDEAS a little. They were foreign to me. 

There are others here in the forum that have gone thru that transition, the weak ones don't make it 

Ask questions, we can help.

[BenLoosli]

I used UG2 from V3 to V18 and some NX1, before my company switched to Pro/E 2001. I have since been on Wildfire and Creo, now on Creo 4. I did use some NX4 and 6 in 2009 and 2010. I did CAD admin support on both products during the transition from UG to Wildfire for 4 years.

18 years on UG and now 18 years on PTC products.

There is a world of difference in the way the 2 companies think in terms of how the software workflow should be. Remember that UG/NX was originally created as a front end to manufacturing and the creation of NC programs. Pro/Engineer was designed to produce solid models. They did not even have a drafting module in the first couple of releases!

Interesting side story occurred during my PTC modeling training. One of the guys was trying to model a hinge that could be changed with a parameter for the angle. When he set the angle to something over 135, the hinge would flip and he nor the instructor could figure out why.

I saw the model and said the problem is not in the PTC code but in the constraint modeler that PTC used at the time. They asked how I know and I said we had seen the same problem in a UG part 2 years earlier and they had confirmed it was a D-Cubed issue. Both UG and PTC used the same constraint modeler, before UG's parent company bought them. Since then PTC has developed their own 3-D constraint modeler based from their licensed version of the D-Cubed code.

That same training class, we had some other UG users and 1 was always saying how UG did this or UG did that, which did not help with instructors teaching. At lunch one day, when no one else was in the room, I told him that I had a UG background and he just needed to think differently about how the 2 worked.

[lhoogeveen]

Check out Jose_Costa's post where he attached the mapkeys.pro.zip file in this discussion. Those mapkeys can be used to open drawing with same name, create new drawing with same name, create new DXF with same name. It's a pretty powerful little hack. Creo 6 has a new option to use the part as the drawing name so the new drawing/dxf with same name mapkeys might not be quite as useful long term. It works with Windchill. As usual with mapkeys, you may have to test/validate with your specific build of Creo.

https://community.ptc.com/t5/Detailing-MBD-MBE/Map-key-to-open-drawing-with-the-same-name-as-the-model/td-p/242212

[wakeboarding77]

Thanks for your reply.  I tried that mapkey and all it did was open the first drawing in my workspace.  not the drawing of the active part.  Below is the mapkey i put in my config.pro.  I am sure I need to modify this somehow but I am not sure what. haha

mapkey od @MAPKEY_NAMEOpens Draw with same name ; @MAPKEY_LABELOpens Draw with same name ;\
mapkey(continued) %>partname1;%load;~ Command `ProCmdModelOpen` ;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Open `file_open` `Type`;~ Close `file_open` `Type`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `file_open` `Type` 1 `db_4`; %partname;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProFileSelPushOpen@context_dlg_open_cmd`;

[lhoogeveen]

You will need to paste the other mapkeys being referenced by the OD mapkey into your config as well (you can call other mapkeys with %). The OD mapkey calls >partname1 and load mapkey. Don't worry about the partname mapkey called near the end... it's being dynamically created by the >partname1/load mapkeys.

[wakeboarding77]

I tried that and but it stops when looking for the drawing and has this text  ~0,-4  in the filename field on the file open window.  Getting closer tho.

[lhoogeveen · Accepted solution]

Check out this other discussion for Mapkey Writing/Editing Tips. On page 2, I just posted Creo 4 M040 mapkeys for open drawing with same name and create drawing with same name.

[wakeboarding77]

Awesome man!  this seems to be working great.  Thanks again!!