Replace the model of a drawing with any model, keep all added dims, etc.

[VMcD]

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders.
discreet product/consumer products, I'm the CAD Admin, the stakeholders are the Design Engineers

2. What version of Creo Parametric are you currently running?
7.0.4.0

3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video.
Replacing a drawing model with an unrelated model loses information such as dimensions.

4. What is the use case for your organization?

We design  product, then 5 more with like parts and need to make drawings of them.


5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization?
This would save many hours of work and provide flexibility in our process to make a new set of parts and drawings when and how we like without conforming our process to the currently available CAD tool functions. This function would also help us keep Creo as main tool and not eval other CAD.

[BenLoosli]

If the model is being replaced with an unrelated model to the original model, how is the software supposed to know what edges of the new model to attach the existing dimensions to?

You may need to reevaluate your drawing creation process or use family tables for designing similar parts that could take advantage of replaced parts easier.

[VMcD]

@BenLoosli  Great question. It would be difficult to have Creo auto-replace references, however currently the dimensions just disappear as shown in my attached image above. Maybe a function like edit references would help. There are many videos on YouTube showing how other CAD tools offer solutions to this problem of dangling references. Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AauP_Jzbbu4

The reason this is an idea request (and not a training request) is because we want to provide flexibility in the NPD process to make a new set of parts and drawings when and how we like without conforming our process to the currently available CAD tool functions (like Family Tables or strict procedural solutions). Our products don't lend themselves to family tables due to the intricate complex surfacing. Also, Family Tables for different production parts is a PLM problem many face. Product development processes typically will concept 1-7 times and fully detailing a drawing would make no sense early in the process to do save-as copies of.

[VMcD]

A step in the right direction here would be to allow either access to the reference model link, or allow replace by any model, even ASM for PRT v.v.

[dnordin]

Reading Ben's comment on "how is the software supposed to know what edges of the new model to attach the existing dimensions to?", made me think of the use of "named selections" in the model that are used with the Ansys toolkit integration (not a reference to Creo Ansys Simulate). Within Creo Parametric running the Ansys toolkit integration, the user can define "named selections" which essentially is just tagging geometry with a name. When transferring the model geometry to Ansys, the named selections go with it, and within Ansys, the user can reference the named selections in the FEA model setup instead of selecting geometry. One advantage of doing such is it allows the FEA model to not lose its references if the geometry of the model changes for any reason.

Perhaps PTC could do something similar allowing the user to reference named selections in the model to create dimensions in the drawing instead of individual geometry selections. If the model in the drawing is changed to a different model, the created dimensions that reference the named selections could remain valid as long as the new model has the same named selections. Expanding further on the idea of named selections, the drawing templates could also potentially make use of the named selections for dimension display further automating drawing creation.

There are videos on YouTube showing the use of "named selections" in Ansys and Creo Parametric for reference.

Regards,

Dan N.

[olivierlp]

Hello, 

Thank you for your idea and the information you provided.