formats falling off drawing

[GrahameWard]

I am doing some mods to some parts that are in an assembly. The files were emailed to me and I have put them in a new folder. When I open the drawing of the assembly, the format has fallen off. Yet the correct format is in the same folder as the drawing, assembly and parts, which is currently my working directory.

This is not the first time I have had this problem, at least at my new company, and I suspect it's something in my config.pro or my .dtl file. I know there's a config.pro option called "pro_format_dir". I don't have this in use at the moment. I thought that if this option wasn't switched on, that ProE would look first in the working directory for the format. Besides, I thought this option was about where Pro looks for formats when you create a new drawing, not where formats are located that appear in a drawing... if you know what I mean.

Does anyone know how I can reattach the format with doing it manually (there are six sheets and notes in the Rev column etc. It would be a PITA).

It's WF 5.0.

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[dgschaefer]

All that option does it tell Creo the default palce your formats are stored. Creo will look there for formats in addition to the other places, but I'm not sure the order. The order taht Creo uses to look for files is:

1. In session
2. Folder the parent object came from
3. Working directory
4. Search paths specified in config.pro or in the searcg_path_file, in the order they are specified.

For drawing formats, the format directory is in there somewhere, I'm guessing between #1 & #2, but I'm not sure. I'd assume it's at least before #4.

If you try openign the format first, then the assy drawing, does that make a difference? If so, Creo is getting the format from somewhere else and it's not the same one. If not, I'm not sure what's going on.

[GrahameWard]

Doug Schaefer wrote:

If you try opening the format first, then the assy drawing, does that make a difference? If so, Creo is getting the format from somewhere else and it's not the same one. If not, I'm not sure what's going on.

Yeah, that's the first thing I tried, it made no difference. It was odd: some of the tables and notes from the format were there, but other stuff like the company logo were not.

[TomD.inPDX]

If the logo is an image overlay, it may not be the format, but Pro|E itself. I have a lot of trouble keeping inserted images showing even in Creo. You work with them for a while and poof, only the corner markers remain.

[dgschaefer]

When a format is brought in, any plain notes become dumb, uneditable text but any tables are converted to native drawing tables. It's not surprising that the tables would remain.

[GrahameWard]

It hardly need be said at this point that the whole way this is done in ProE is ridiculous, it's like Autocad 12 or something. There must be a better way to show a format on a drawing.

[dgschaefer]

There is a setting, somewhere, that turns the format on and off. I searched for it in WF4, but couldn't find it. Check to see that the format isn't simply turned off.

Also, look for drawing layers. Not sure if you can put the format on a layer or not.

I don't use drawing layers, but I was burned recently by a drawing layer that got auto created because the rule driven model layers were set just so (a bug, I believe, but I haven't reported it yet). All my notes disappeared, had no idea why.

[TomD.inPDX]

I think I ran into this before and the formats were required to reside in my default format folder and would ignore the working folder. I do not set anything in config.pro for formats. The only alternative, -maybe- if the formats were in memory at the time. But somehow, Creo knows where they original came from and complains when you try to replace it with one otherwise identical.

[GrahameWard]

Hmm, maybe I will try this again and put the specific format in my default format directory on the computer's hard drive, before starting the session and opening the drawing.