sheet metal thickness' and family tables

[TommyMash]

I've been experiencing problems when the sheet metal thickness parameter is added into the family table. When I edit the value within the family table everything works fine, I can go to the instance with the new value and it updates. The problem occur's when I go to return to the parent model the value of it changes as well, for example: if the parent model has a thickness of .108" I enter the parameter in the family table and change only the instance model to a value lets say .078". I open up the instance model and the thickness changes to .078". I return the parent model and regenerate and the thickness value changes to that of the instance model (.078") from .108". I've placed a call to the PTC support group over a month ago and have yet to receive an answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tommy

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[MartinHanak]

Tommy,

can you upload your model?

Martin

[TommyMash]

So I've re-created the problem using simple parts. You'll notice that the "parent" part has a thickness of .108" and the "child" part has a thickness of .078" to start. If you open up child and edit the definition of the flat feature and modify the 12" dimension, then return to the family table in parent you'll notice that the value of the parent thickness has changed from it's original value of .108 to .078". Let me know what happens.

Thanks a bunch

Tommy

[MartinHanak]

Tommy,

I have done following things...

1.] I started ProE WF4 M150 32-bit on Windows XP SP3

2.] I opened generic ... parent.prt.2

3.] I opened Family Table editor, select CHILD instance and opened it

4.] I set d1=12.12 and d2=13.13 (I confirmed modification of FT driven dimension)

5.] I regenerated CHILD instance

6.] I activated generic model and opened Family Table editor

7.] Everything is OK, thickness of generic is 0.108, thickness of CHILD instance is 0.078

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I ignored child.xpr.zip, because it does not make sense (from my point of view) to use accelerator file in this situation.

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Have a nice weekend

Martin

[TommyMash]

I really appreciate you taking the time to look into this for me. Just one last thing, when you changed the dimensions of the child part did you edit the definition of the sketch of the flat or did you just do an edit? The reason i ask is that the problem only occurs when you perform an edit definition.

[MartinHanak]

Tommy,

I did just an edit of d1 and d2 dimension values.

Martin

[VladimirPalffy]

Hello Tommy

I tried it in on Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 M090 and everything was fine (Instance model and Generic model has own defined size of thickness)

Which version of ProE (Creo Elements/Pro) do you have?

Vladimir

[TommyMash]

Hi Vladimir,

We're currently using version 4.0.

[Kevin]

I tried with both WF4 and WF5 and get the same results although I don't think it's really a problem. I would say it's how you are modifying the parameters. You are modifying the instance which is causing a regenration of the generic with the values from the instance. I would say the reason this is happening is the instance gets it's geometry from the generic. To keep things from changing always go to the generic and modify the family table.

[TommyMash]

I can appreciate that for sure although sometimes it's much easier to go into the model and change it there. It's always easier when you have the model right in front of you as apposed to seeing a table with a pile of number in it. The funny thing is, is that it only happens when you edit the definiton of the feature but doesnt't happen when you just edit the feature. As well the thickness is added to the family table as a parameter, when you add other things such as a part description as a parameter into the family table and then edit it in the part window the parents description doesn't change to match it. Weird, I'm thinking it's more along the lines of a clitch that they need to work out, hopefully in the next patch update.

Thanks for the input.

[Kevin]

A change to the smt_thickness value also occurs with Edit. If you are in an instance and try to edit the value of the thickness the value will change on the screen but the instance model doesn't update to the new value it maintains the value listed in the table. The value for the generic will change to the value you entered. My guess is system parameters are treated differently. The other values such as description are not system parameters. So when you edit the definition of the instance the system sees a change in the system parameter which causes the generic model to regenrate. This still doesn't really cause a problem unless you are using the generic for some reason as the table entries are not changed. In this case try to stay away from using the generic. If you need the value the generic has create an instance with those values. There is really no need to use a generic part for anything so I wouldn't get to caught up with changes made to a generic sheetmetal thickness.