Layouts created using the Pro/NOTEBOOK module (.lay files) are a very powerful way of centralising and controlling all of the relations and parameters used to drive designs. They often contain extensive relations to calculate values for global parameters that can then be used to drive model geometry with the benefit of eveything being controlled from the one location.
However, when trying to document the design, these relations are "locked away" in the layout file. As Mathcad is design the document the engineering calculations used during the design process, it would be incredibly useful if the Creo/Mathcad integration could be expanded beyond Parts and Assemblies to Notebook files. The notebook can be used to centrally control all of the global parameters and still have relations, but for complex calculations, parameters from the notebook could be fed into a Mathcad worksheet and then the Mathcad worksheet does all of the calculations and feeds back its values into the layout. The would mean that:
- the calucations used in the notebook are more easliy read by a user
- documentation of the design is of a higher quality
This would also mean all of the other benefits of Mathcad, such as units sensitivity, graphing, etc. can be used.
