Creo Elements/Pro - Intent Manager

Hi John,

Not the answer you want to hear but I suggest you "grasp the nettle" and immerse yourself in the sketcher using the Intent manager. I can't even remember just when I started to use it but it must have been around R 2000i or perhaps R 2001. Once I was used to it I would never go back. I consider it a powerful productivity in my work.

WF5 (Creo/Elements Pro) has several enhancements to the sketcher that are a decent improvement too so you amy want to check up on these. If you are interested I can send you the "What's new in WF5 from Wf4" that I made for our company though this has much more than just Sketcher (i.e. the changes that were of most relevance to us).

Back to the Intent Manager in Sketcher i have some things that I look to do:

• Watch for the set up planes as these are usually references I want to use.
• Add new references early in the sketch as that helps with alignment of entities in my sketch.
• Add centerlines as construction entities as again this helps with intent such as symmetry.
• Orthogonal sketching is easy and you get horizontal and vertical intents.
• If I want angles I sketch these at an exaggerated angle and modify the angle dimension parametrically or drag it later.
• Usual guidelines apply to how complicated you want to make your sketch; generally simpler is better but sometimes more complex is needed (e.g. including radiused corners is generally a good idea for trajectories).
• Look at the Modify icon for your sketch. Alows you to adjust one or more dimensions at the same time and to lock them so that the shape remains as the overall sizes increases or decreases. Quite powerful.
• Set the "Shade Closed Loops" and "Highlight Open Ends" Sketcher commands on by picking those icons. (Great pity these cannot be set on by default)
• You can use Reference dimensions to better see what happens in your sketch. WF5 has made this easier.
• Use the "Constraints" tool (icon) though it stays with the last selected constraint and that can be confusing when you look for it.
• Use the RMB in Sketcher to get more options than before. You can set some constraints off under Options but as I say give it a few weeks first.
• I am sure there are more but that will do for now.

Good luck in any case

Regards, Brent

A year late...just looking at the latest release )which no one ever sends me a part using).

Intent Manager was the begining of the end for GOOD ProE models.

It makees for lazy designers with poorly constrained features that update in unanticipated ways.

The one upide, it is good way to identify poor designers. If someone uses it, they probably do half ass work.

John,

If you want to switch off the intent manager permanently you have to switch off esch constraints in options and save that config files and use it. Below are the few constraint options,

sketcher_midpoint_constr

sketcher_parallel_constr

you can get these options for all the constraints.

in other hand, if you want to switch off temperorily, just right click afer sketching entities so that you can lock the constraints applied by Intent Manager. Check this video in youtube for more clarity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmOvAnMQekI

Thanks