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jstarkey1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 2, 2011
Question

prehighighlighting of imported geometry

  • December 2, 2011
  • 7 replies
  • 1691 views
I have not found a good way!

This is a huge problem for mold designers, like me using Pro-Mold and EMX.

I work on a lot of large imported parts. Pre-Highlight (in WF) as it tries to highlight these parts and mold extracts. You turn pre-highlight off, then you have a bunch of monkey motion extra mouse picks trying to deal with it, with-in the selection filter.

I work as a contract mold designer. A number of my customers are at ownership level (of mold shops) and do not have the new toy, new software, oh-boy altitude toward software. They are concerned strictly with the bottom line. I venture to say pre-highlight adds 20-30% to a mold design. Many of these shops are hanging onto their Pro-E version 2001 or have switched to other software packages over this issue. I have tried mapkeys for the selection filter to deal with this issue, without much luck.

I have repeatedly ask, the man in charge of product development at PTC, as well have turned in enhancement requests for some sort of Config.pro option. This to turn pre-highlight off and to have the option for selection to work as it did Pre-WF.

So far no luck!

I agree with you and hope something gets done!

Best Regards,
James Starkey
Starkey Tech. Serv., L.L.C.



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7 replies

D
DeanLong1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2011

Hey all...I thought this was common knowledge about the pre-selection highlighting debacle. You can press and hold the Alt key and the preselection should be "ignored". In other words, with the Alt key depressed the pre-selection kind of hibernates and lets you move mouse over and move the model normally.


Hope it helps....

J
jstarkey1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2011
Yea,

But you got to turn lose of it some time to do any work to the models. Then starts the fun with large imported parts and mold extracts.

Best Regards,
James Starkey
Starkey Tech. Serv., L.L.C.

D
DeanLong1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2011

I see you have used the filter method to get away from the auto-highlighting? I.E. setting it to Annotation?


Aside from just setting the config option "Prehighlight" to "No" I don't know what more you could do with the current options. I will dig a bit more and see what I can find.

S
sneg36911-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 3, 2011
Well said James..I may add, we also do mold design, that being said, in mold
design, Pro assigns certain colors to certain types of geometry ex:
silhouette curves, work piece, 1-sided edge, and the list goes on.
Preselecting, when active, highlights all this geometry to the color of
cyan, when that happens, it is almost impossible to distiquish any of the
geometry mentioned above because all the geometry is one color, which in
turn constitutes needed intervention from the operator, to either move the
model, go to the tool bar and turn off the preselecting, then move foreword
from there, all this affects the productive of the operator, and all is
unneeded. Further, when you throw a huge imported file into the mix, Pro
looks at this import geometry as one feature, when the cursor cruises over
this geometry, the import model wants to highlight whether you want it to or
not, and if the import model happens to be a large file, well then, the
operator has to sit and wait for either the software to catch up or the
graphics to repaint, all in the name sake of prehighlighting. I really find
it hard to believe that nobody has found/created a way to get around this
issue. Like James said, preselecting adds hours to the job. no if, ands or
buts about it, in turn, we contractors take it in the shorts. It used to be
that anybody that used Pro, had an edge/advantage to there competitor..I now
disagree in today's world











Best regards

Kelly Gensley





Genz Design & Machine L.L.C

Box 232

Victor, Iowa 52347
J
jnelson14-Alexandrite
14-Alexandrite
December 3, 2011
I have hated the prehighlighting ever since it first came out. I rarely ever use or change the Filter menu/selections, so I cannot comment on that. But when the prehighlight was introduced I developed 2 mapkeys, 1 that turns it off and 1 that turns it back on. Turning if off allows me to use the original query selection interface, which I much rather prefer over the highlight flashing on screen.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

----- Reply message -----
From: "Gensley Kelly" <->
To: "James Starkey" <->, "-" <->
Subject: [proecad] - RE: prehighighlighting of imported geometry
Date: Sat, Dec 3, 2011 8:57 am



Well said James….I may add, we also do mold design, that being said, in mold design, Pro assigns certain colors to certain types of geometry ex: silhouette curves, work piece, 1-sided edge, and the list goes on. Preselecting, when active, highlights all this geometry to the color of cyan, when that happens, it is almost impossible to distiquish any of the geometry mentioned above because all the geometry is one color, which in turn constitutes needed intervention from the operator, to either move the model, go to the tool bar and turn off the preselecting, then move foreword from there, all this affects the productive of the operator, and all is unneeded. Further, when you throw a huge imported file into the mix, Pro looks at this import geometry as one feature, when the cursor cruises over this geometry, the import model wants to highlight whether you want it to or not, and if the import model happens to be a large file, well then, the operator has to sit and wait for either the software to catch up or the graphics to repaint, all in the name sake of prehighlighting. I really find it hard to believe that nobody has found/created a way to get around this issue. Like James said, preselecting adds hours to the job… no if, ands or buts about it, in turn, we contractors take it in the shorts. It used to be that anybody that used Pro, had an edge/advantage to there competitor….I now disagree in today’s world





Best regards
Kelly Gensley


Genz Design & Machine L.L.C
Box 232
Victor, Iowa 52347
D
dgschaefer21-Topaz II
21-Topaz II
December 5, 2011
This mapkey will toggle the pre-highlighting. If it's off, it'll turn
it on, if it's on it'll turn it off.



mapkey vph @MAPKEY_LABELPrehighlighting;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `MenuBar1`1 `Edit`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `Edit.cbSelect`;~ Close
`main_dlg_cur` `MenuBar1`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Close `main_dlg_cur` `Edit.cbSelect`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `main_dlg_cur` `psh_sel_filter`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `selprefs` `PrehButton` ;~ Activate
`selprefs` `Ok`;



I also assign it to a function key (F5) so I can flip it on an off with
one keystroke:



mapkey $F5 @MAPKEY_LABELPrehighlighting;%VPH



I took this from our WF5 config, but it may have been created in WF4 or
earlier.



Doug Schaefer
J
jstarkey1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
December 5, 2011
Doug,

I appreciate your effort to assist.

I already have makeys that are all iconed up for pre-highlight off/on and for picking items in the selection filter.

It does not address the main problem which is all the extra mapkey, key-stroke, mouse movement, monkey motion in/out of the selection filter. Which chews up a huge amount of design time over how Pre-WF mouse selection worked. Especially if you are in a situation of spending a lot of time working on large imported part models and mold extracts.

I want (and I think, I speck for some others) PTC to give us a config.pro option. To allow mouse selection to work as it did Pre-WF.

Best regards,
James Starkey
Starkey Tech. Serv., L.L.C.


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