Ghost Items.
I worked on a drawing, saved it and found the Workspace filled with ghosts. Where did they come from? Well, a number of them seemingly showed up because of the assembly mode Replace function. It seems that software developers want to make the CAD system do the work of the PDM system and remember what used to be in an assembly, by default. This leaves references to parts that aren't used anymore, but because they aren't used any more they don't get checked-in/out. Thanks software developers. Made a 10 minute change take about an hour. There's a button to turn remembering off, but by default it remembers so the PDM system can have bunches of ghost objects to deal with.
The other thing that's a great deal of fun is that I can't just search for these references from the Reference Viewer; instead I have to manually scroll through hundreds of parts. And when I find and delete the reference, the Reference Viewer resets the position back to the top, so I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to get back to where I was looking for the next one. But i can't use the reference viewer with a drawing. Even though drawings can maintain references to parts that used to be there (at least that's what Windchill reports when I ask about references in the workspace) I can't see or delete them from the drawing.
Because I can't search for them using the regular Find function, I also have a hard time finding ones in subassemblies. The Reference Viewer is not much help there. Often it resets the 'top' level to some mid-level assembly and then it's stuck, so traversing the branches is not simple.
I did run across a handy feature - the Red X. Instead of telling me that the part is purposely suppressed and that's why it wasn't retrieved, I have to guess that maybe it wasn't found.
Pen Widths (again)
These are all applied on a per-color-type. That is that certain curve/text elements will be associated with certain pen numbers. Solid geometry edges are always 'white' regardless of actual color, and are associated with pen 1. Draft items and datum curves can be associated to different colors.
Figuring out what the printed width is a process. It all starts with penX_line_weight in the config. By default there are some widths assigned in .005 inch increments, so a weight of 16 is .080 inch wide. These can be over-ridden by specifying a particular width for a particular draft item in a drawing. Pretty sure width can't be applied to solid geometry, but haven't checked.Then comes the pen table. The pen table functions just like real pens. If I told you to draw a 1/4 inch line and gave you a fine-tip ball point, you would draw a fine line. If I set the line width for white (pen1) to .250 and set the pen table to use a .001 line, the line is going to be .001. So the only way around this is to omit the corresponding pen width from the pen table; much as if I'd asked for 1/4 inch line and let you find a magic marker.
If only there were -real- pen plotters in use today, and not raster printers that can provide lines of any width limited only by paper size and laser/inkjet resolution.
The best part is this. When I change the penX_line_weight and don't use a pen table, the line width only changes for Postscript output, not PDF export.
So, for the 40,000th time, Creo should do the following for Postscript:
1) Set the header and footer as -external- files, not baked in to the executable, so that secondary software can fix things
2) Let Postscript scale the output instead of baking the scale and then applying pen widths (ratio of line width to length is not currently preserved)
3) Change the priority so that -assigned- weights have the highest priority instead of fictional pen assignments
4) Change the setlinecap and setlinejoin to rounded for both, like every actual pen and engraver and router is, not the butt and miter which aren't
5) Include the font descriptions in the Postscript output so that Distiller or similar can create searchable PDFs; this means the font 'font' as well as the other PTC plotter fonts.
6) Feel free to include the other PDF directives that are used to generate layers and bookmarks
7) Just generally - I never want a plot that is based on the 'zoom' factor. If I want it I can get Acrobat to do it.
Fun with table cells.
I wanted a little space at the left end of some table cells. Since there's no 'Tab' setting in cells I decided it would work to insert a column and blank the mutual line.I was soon reminded that 'Insert Column' and 'Insert Row' are sticky - choose one of them, insert a row/column, and shift to another tab and it's still stuck trying to insert a column/row. Need to use Ctrl-A to cause it to reset. Then it took a while to find out how to make the 'blank border' button work. Hovering over the inactive button didn't produce instructions on what was missing to activate it. Turns out one has to first select a cell, then Select Table to get the table selected before a border can be blanked. It's like how Move Special can only be applied when an entire table is selected (but if it's applied when two tables are selected only one table moves.)
I also tried to display the symbolic name of a dimension in a view, and the value of the dimension in a cell in a table as part of documenting how a template part worked so the user could see them both at the same time. No go. It seems if a dimension is in a note or a cell, it copies the displayed condition for the dimension. Of some use is that the first time a dimension is put in a note the dimension is removed from the drawing. The second time it's in a note, the first note is unchanged. If one of the notes is deleted the dimension is restored and the other note remains; I was just hoping it kept the current display status and tried switching from &D to &S between the first and second cells.
Embedding a spreadsheet
I Inserted an Excel spreadsheet object into a drawing. But if I 'Open' it that's it. Help says that I should select "Close and Return" but that entry is not part of the Excel menu. If I select "Close" from Excel the image still appears on the drawing, but it can no longer be edited. Creo complains the OLE object can't be found. Not that it matters, as it is embedded as a bitmap. When creating a PDF via Save-As/Export, the compression is of low quality.
Copying and pasting patterned features.
It seemed to work pretty well, but then failed to produce the expected results. It turns out that when a pattern is copied that has pattern relations in it, the relations are not copied.
Can't reroute dimensions for features that are patterned.
Even though the direction of the dimension would be the same, it's necessary to unwind all pattern references to re-define a feature reference. Of course Creo will let a user redefine a patterned feature and, after the effort goes into that, spring the message "Pattern will be deleted." Which is what the user was trying to avoid.
Detailed views
Sometimes 'Fill' works and sometimes it doesn't.
One thing that doesn't work is if the parent view has fill, the detail will probably not use it; instead the filled areas will be blank, just like one would not expect.
What does work is cranking down the hatch spacing until the lines are closer together than the pixels are, which means a solid appearing hatch will have gaps in the detail.
Move to sheet
This is a wonderful trap to have on the detail menu. If there is only one sheet Creo automatically creates a new sheet, unasked, and moves the item to that sheet. Since the number of times I want this to happen -ever- I can count on one hand, there is no reason to place it on the fast access, and easily mis-clicked pop-up menu, where it has caused multiple instances of frustration.
Set Datums
An oldie but a goodie. Someone working on a component decides to 'Set Datum' and the top level 15 sheet drawing that takes a minute per-sheet to regen now requires going over with a fine toothed comb to manually blank each and every 'datum' that pops up. Nothing like time wasted due to the auto-appearance feature that Shown Datums have.