SUMMARY: WF3, External or Internal Sketch?

[DamianCastillo]

Pro/Users,

I got the feed back I have always received with this issue. People on both
sides of the camp and some in the middle. I was curious to see if PTC was
teaching one method being better than the other. I fully understand the
advantages and problems with both.

Honestly, Internal Sketches have more advantages than problems when
compared to external. This is my opinion and I am sticking to it. There
is a place for External Sketches but the reasons to use it are fewer.

I will now post the replies from the community and remove the names to
protect the innocent. Thanks for your replies. It always helps to know
what the pulse of the community is.

[brianadkins]

It might be nice to be able to convert an internal sketch to an external sketch... I've had occasions where I've realized (after the fact) that an external sketch or datum curve would have given me mode flexibility in a certain situation than my internal sketch.

In WF3, you can do this with internal datum features... Just drag them out of the parent feature in the model tree and they become available to all downstream features.

-Brian

[whschmid]

Would this be like Solidworks? You can create a sketch. Then if you create a feature from the sketch, it gets absorbed into the feature in a tree-like fashion. If you start by creating a feature that requires a sketch, it shows up the same way, under the feature like a tree. Later, if you delete the feature, the sketch can remain. You can also use the sketch for another feature, even if you've used it for a feature already.

Sorry to keep bringing up the "S" word, but I've used it, and while it too has its shortcomings, it just really points out that Pro/E shouldn't be so difficult.

Bill Schmid
CAD Designer
Rexair
Cadillac, MI
www.rainbowsystem.com

Pro/E 2001, ver. 2001360
No Intralink
WinXP, SP 2
Dell Precision 360
3.2 GHz Pentium 4, 2 Gig RAM
Nvidia Quadro FX 1000

[dgschaefer]

Bill,

I see you are still on 2001.  I know what you're talking about, we use SW here as well.  WF does work much like SW, but not exactly the same.

In my opinion, Pro|E does SW one better in this regard.  The external sketch is 'absorbed' into the resulting feature, but it still remains in the model tree, but hidden (greyed out).  With SW, once the sketch is 'absorbed', you have no idea where in the tree the sketch resides.  Redefining the sketch may put you a dozen features up the tree, but because the sketch doesn't appear in the tree, there's no way of knowing.

With Pro|E WF2 (and I assume WF1, but I don't do enough WF1 to know), the sketch appears in the tree under the feature, but it also remains where it was originally created.

Doug Schaefer

[mhergert]

I also use SW and that is one of my biggest gripes. When the sketch is absorbed into a feature, it re-orders your sketch down to wherever that feature happens to be.

Mark