Highlighting consumed references

[Creopp]

When a datum plane lose his geometry reference, Creo doesn't highligth the problem. Creo just keep the datum plane as a "dead geometry".

Nota : I use Creo 7.0.2

For me it is an important problem because, often, when I make modification in my 3D model I remove some geometry. Recently, I discovered in a prototype that a clip didn't have the good localisation because the plane who pilots his localisation isn't up to date because of this problem.

For example, in the case of the image above, you can see that the datum plane "debut_guidage" (I'm french) seems to be normal but when you open the editor of this function, you can see that the reference is consummed. It is real, the reference is consummed by the function "Enlevement 4" but as you can see Creo doesn't warn us about the problem.

I called the PTC assistance, they didn't find a way to answer to this problematic and they suggested me to make a proposition here.

Nota : I observe that the function Round also doesn't highligh consumed references.

[S_Edgenear]

I've noticed this also in Creo 4, but I thought that by now that bug was already solved.

There are situations were consumed references are shown in edit definition, but not in edit references, other cases it's the other way around.

[Creopp]

@S_Edgenear Yes, the problem is not solve, I use Creo 7

[S_Edgenear]

Now I'm using also Creo 7, but to be honest, I did not test yet that situation to check if the problem was already solved or not.

[pjouet]

I still see this behavior on Creo 9, and it is very embarrassing, even dangerous for conception...

[S_Edgenear]

Trim surface also has this problem. If the quilt is changed, the reference is missing, and shown in red if we use Edit Definition, but if using Edi References, the missing quilt is not shown as missing. The worst part, is that there is no feature failure in the model tree, but the trimmed surface maybe trimmed by an old location or not trimmed at all. This happens when we trim a surface or quilt by a plane. Also, if the plane location looses its parametric reference, as shown in the original poster issue, the Trim surface feature also is not shown as failing in the model tree or in the edit references, but if using Edit Definition, we can see that the trimming plane reference is missing.

[AlessandroFerri]

Would be enough to show these types of "missing" refs in the model tree in the same way Creo highlights with a yellow triangle a data sharing feature without its parent in session (see following figure).

As an example, the message for a round feature that uses alternate refs is as follow:

Alternate reference

The original reference Edge(Extrude xxx) is missing. Edge:F5(EXTRUDE_xxx) has been used by the system for the feature regeneration.

The problem is that you discover this only when you accidentally edit the definition of this feature (or upon a regeneration failure).

If you don't fix these types of features when they're still regenerated, it will be more difficult to fix them when they fail.

In conclusion, I agree with you that it would be very useful to expose this problem in the model tree and not only visualize it when you edit the feature definition or "buried" into the tons of messages creo shows in the message log.