Pro/ENGINEER

WILDFIRE 2.0
Fundamentals
Written By:
Michael A. Drum

Lesson 01 – Pro/ENGINEER Basic Elements

1-1
Lesson 02 – Taking a Look Around
2-1
Lesson 03 – Selecting Objects
3-1
Lesson 04 – Sketcher Basics
4-1
Lesson 05 – Sketch Feature
5-1
Lesson 06 – Extrude Feature
6-1
Lesson 07 – Making Changes
7-1
Lesson 08 – Datums Part 1
8-1
Lesson 09 – Revolve Feature
9-1
Lesson 10 – Datums Part 2
10-1
Lesson 11 – Sweep Feature
11-1
Lesson 12 – Blend Feature
12-1
Lesson 13 – Rounds
13-1
Lesson 14 – Chamfers
14-1
Lesson 15 – Draft
15-1
Lesson 16 – Hole Feature
16-1
Lesson 17 – Shell Feature
17-1
Lesson 18 – Rib Feature
18-1
Lesson 19 – Patterns
19-1
Lesson 20 – Variable Section Sweeps
20-1
Lesson 21 – Swept Blends
21-1
Lesson 22 – Boundary Blended Surface
22-1
Lesson 23 – Copy & Paste Tool
23-1
Lesson 24 – Fill Tool
24-1
Lesson 25 – Merge Tool
25-1
Lesson 26 – Trim Tool
26-1
Lesson 27 – Intersect Tool
27-1
Lesson 28 – Offset Tool
28-1
Lesson 29 – Solidify Tool
29-1
Lesson 30 – Thicken Tool
30-1
Lesson 31 – Extend Tool
31-1
Lesson 32 – Mirror Tool
32-1
Lesson 33 – Layers
33-1
Lesson 34 – Parameters & Relations
34-1
Lesson 35 – Family Tables
35-1
Lesson 36 – View Manager
36-1
Lesson 37 – Assembly Mode – Bottom-Up Design
37-1
Lesson 38 – Assembly Mode – Top-Down Design
38-1
Lesson 39 – Assembly Mode – Assembly
Cuts 39-1
Lesson 40 – Assembly Mode – Assembly
Operations 40-1
Lesson 41 – Drawing Mode – Drawing
Fundamentals 41-1
Lesson 42 – Drawing Mode – Creating A Drawing
42-1
Lesson 43 – Drawing Mode – General
Views 43-1
Lesson 44 – Drawing Mode – Projection & Section Views
44-1
Lesson 45 – Drawing Mode – Auxiliary & Detailed
Views 45-1
Lesson 46 – Drawing Mode – Show Axes & GTOL
Datums 46-1
Lesson 47 – Drawing Mode – Dimensioning
47-1
Lesson 48 – Drawing Mode – Broken & Partial
Views 48-1
Lesson 49 – Drawing Mode – GTOLS &
Symbols 49-1
Lesson 50 – Drawing Mode – 2D Drafting
50-1
Lesson 51 – Drawing Mode – Tables & Balloons
51-1
Lesson 52 – Drawing Mode – Adding Sheets &
Finalize 52-1
Lesson 53 – Miscellaneous System Functions
53-1
Appendix
A1 A-1
Appendix
A2 A-2
Appendix
A3 A-3
Appendix
A4 A-4
Tutorial Data Files
Fundamentals.zip
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the basic elements of
Pro/ENGINEER, including the different object types, parametric modeling and
design intent.
Pro/ENGINEER OBJECT TYPES
Before we get into Pro/ENGINEER and start poking around, it is good to understand
the different types of files created and used in Pro/ENGINEER so you will understand
the terminology as we go forward.

PARTS – filename.prt

A Part in Pro/ENGINEER is a model that represents an individual product

component. Each part is made up of features that define its size, shape, color and
function. As each feature is created, a history is kept that defines how the model is
made. This is known as Regeneration History.

A successful feature is one that regenerates without any errors or warnings. We will
see in a later topic how to deal with these situations.

Parts are the building block of all Pro/ENGINEER objects. Without parts, assemblies
and drawings can not exist.

ASSEMBLIES – filename.asm

An Assembly in Pro/ENGINEER is nothing more than a container that points to part

files. Parts can be assembled into an assembly (bottom-up design), or created within
an assembly (top-down design). In either method, assemblies still rely on the part file
to exist.

In assemblies, we can define rigid constraints (such as two objects fastened or

welded together), or degree of freedom connections (such as a pin joint or a bearing).

Assemblies also maintain a history of the order in which components were either
assembled or created, as well as features that are created in the assembly itself
(such as holes or cuts). This history must be successfully regenerated for the
assembly to work properly.

DRAWINGS – filename.drw
 A Drawing is a two-dimensional representation of a part or assembly file. It relies on
either the part or assembly to exist in order to work. Drawings contain views, tables,
notes, dimensions, symbols, and other entities designed to fully describe the model
for the purpose of manufacturing.

FORMATS – filename.frm

A Format is a file that overlays on a drawing to create the border, title block, revision
block, and other company-specific standards that must always appear on that
drawing. A Drawing can exist without the actual format file.

SECTIONS – filename.sec

A Section is a two-dimensional sketch that is used to create certain features.

Sections are widely used when you are in Part or Assembly mode, and are most
often created within the model, not as a separate file.

A section file can be created and re-used many times. In this case the section will be
saved out as a stand-alone file. We will see both types of sections in this training
guide.

ADDITIONAL FILE TYPES

Pro/ENGINEER also creates other types of files that may appear on your computer.
The following table outlines some of these file types and their usage.

File Type File Ext. File Usage

.cfg Govern the look, feel and behavior of the application. The extensions are:
.dtl Model Tree Configuration – CFG, Drawing Setup File – DTL, User Defined
.map Colors – MAP, Plotter Configuration – PCF, Pen Table File – PNT, Main
.pcf Pro/E Configuration – PRO, System Color File – SCL and Main User
Configuration Files
.pnt Interface Configuration – WIN. These files should not be deleted.
.pro
.scl Examples: tree.cfg, e.dtl, color.map, plotter.pcf, plotter.pnt, config.pro,
.win syscol.scl, and config.win.
These files generally do not exist unless there is a problem or potential
problem with something in Pro/ENGINEER. Either the model or the setup of
.crc
Pro/E has an error. The extensions are: Circular Reference – CRC, Bad
Error Files .err
Geometry – ERR, Config.pro Error – OUT. These files can be deleted.
.out
Examples: 12345.crc, bad_geometry.err, and std.out
Graph features can be created to drive the creation of some features using
an equation. User Defined Features (UDF’s) also use this file extension
Graph .gph when saved. These files should not be deleted.

Example: holes.gph
Typically created when performing an information query on an object in
Pro/ENGINEER using the Info menu commands. These files can be
Information .inf deleted.

Example: feature.inf
Certain functions, such as exporting a model to an IGES format, will
generate log files. These files can be deleted.
Log Files .log
Example: iges_out.log
Markups .mrk A markup file, or redline file, can be created for parts, assemblies or
drawings. These can be used to convey changes electronically. The
 original model or drawing must exist for these to work. These files should
not be deleted.

Example: 12345.mrk
File created when running a mass property calculation on a part of
assembly. These files can be deleted.
Mass Property .m_p
Example: 12345.m_p
.sym Two-dimensional entities created in a drawing that can be re-used in other
drawings. Examples of these include revision hex symbols, part marking
Symbols symbols, weld symbols, etc. These files should not be deleted.

Example: revision_hex.sym.1
Drawing tables that can be re-used in different drawings. Bill of material
tables are a good example. These files should not be deleted.
Tables .tbl
Example: bom.tbl.1
.txt A running log file of the current session, from the moment Pro/ENGINEER is
opened until the moment it closes. Stored in the c:\trails directory. These
Trail Files files can be deleted.

Example: trail.txt.1

If you are not sure whether you can or should delete a certain file, please contact
your CAD Administrator for guidance.

PARAMETRIC MODELING
Pro/ENGINEER is a feature-based, parametric solid modeling tool. As described in
the first section, when you create a part file, you create a series of features that add
or remove material, resulting in a final model. This is what is known as feature-based
modeling.

Each feature contains parametric information that defines the size, shape and
relationship to other features. For example, when you create an extruded protrusion
that is shaped as a rectangular block, you can define the following:
• Length, Width and Depth of block.
• Sketching Plane where you initially sketched the rectangle before extruding
it.
• Orientation Plane to define how you look at the sketch when you enter into
section mode.
• Dimensional references (such as other geometry edges, planes, surfaces,
etc.)
• Direction of the extrude

Parametric information comes in one of the many forms listed below.

• Dimensions
• Relations
• Parameters
• References
• Color (although not to a major degree that might cause a failure of the model
if missing)

Some of these parameters directly affect the ability of a model to regenerate

successfully, while others affect information about those features. Even if we create
 features in Pro/ENGINEER that are less constrained (such as Style curves and
surfaces), we are still embedding parametric information in these features.

As you learn more about using Pro/ENGINEER, the idea of using parametric
information becomes second nature to you, so we won’t spend any more time on it at
this early juncture.

DESIGN INTENT
This is, perhaps, the most important thing you should take away from this lesson, if
not the entire course. Design intent is the practice of following best practices and
standards to generate robust models that react well to change and function the way
you intended with the fewest amount of time spent on rework.

Throughout this guide, we will illustrate best ways of approaching modeling in

Pro/ENGINEER, and we will also learn all about implementing design intent into a
model. For now, consider this…

In traditional 2D cad/drawing packages, as well as many 3D designer tools, the result

is an image that best represents the final product being made. With great care and
determination, you can end up with a representation that is very exact to the size and
shape of the final product, but you will always lack the one thing that defines design
intent, the ability to dynamically adapt to the types of changes that come about in a
manufacturing environment.

Sure, you can add/delete entities, drag a few curves, etc., but you will not capture the
true nature of robust modeling, which is the ability to adapt to change with minimal
rework. If you are using Pro/ENGINEER to simply arrive at a size and shape that
represents your final product, then you are using the software as a sculptor would
use clay, and are not getting the best return on your time.

Design intent can be captured in the smallest details, such as the way in which you
might dimension a sketch for an extruded protrusion. By dimensioning one way, you
can drastically affect the way in which the part can be manufactured (tolerance stack-
up affects). Look at the following figure.

In this figure, we can see the overall length is called out as 8.0. If we had an overall
tolerance in our model of +0.1in., then the length could vary from 7.9 to 8.1 inches
when manufactured.
 Now, look at the next figure, which still gives the same overall shape and size.

With the same tolerance, the overall length could vary from 7.7 to 8.3 inches, or a
difference of +0.2in., which is twice the standard tolerance. This is not to say that the
second dimensioning scheme is incorrect, because we might not care about the
overall length, and we might be more concerned with the exact width and location of
the center groove.

Also, the way in which you dimension can make drastic changes easy or very
difficult. You must always anticipate that you will need to change the model. This will
affect the decisions you make early on when modeling. For example, in the two
figures above, if we were asked to increase the length to 9.000 inches, we could
simply change one dimension in the first figure, while we would have to decide which
dimension we needed to change in the second figure. One might argue that simply
changing the 2.5 dimension to the far right will produce the same result, and they
would be correct, however in most cases, such a change is not so cut and dry.

We will see this in more detail as this guide progresses.

COMMON MODELING APPROACH
BOTTOM-UP DESIGN

The following flowchart represents the basic steps on bottom-up design.

With Bottom-Up Design, parts are created as stand-alone files with an appropriate
drawing. As you create enough parts, you begin to assemble them into an assembly
file. Once the assembly is created, you create a drawing for the assembly.

Each individual part has a strong chance of existing independently from each other.
The assembly and the drawing files will require the part files to exist. The ability to
adapt to change is reduced in this mode, because there is very little tying the parts
together. For example, if you design a tote with a lid, there is no guarantee that the
tote base and lid will line up. If a dimensional change is made to the base, the lid will
probably not fit correctly unless it is updated as well.

TOP-DOWN DESIGN

The following flowchart shows the basic steps to the top-down approach to design.
In contrast to bottom-up design, a top-down approach to design involves building the
individual part files in the context of an assembly file. A neutral skeleton part
captures all interface information between the components (a 3D layout), then only
information needed for a particular part file is passed into that file to be used as a
starting point for the geometry.

Once the skeleton geometry is in the individual part, you can work in the part by itself
and be confident that it will completely fit when you go back to the assembly
(provided that you use the skeleton geometry to mark the location where all of the
boundaries and interconnects occur.

A MELTING POT

Ultimately, you can choose to work in either a bottom-up or top-down approach, or

choose to perform a hybrid of these two where it suits you. The type of product you
are designing may help you choose which method will work better. In this guide, we
will demonstrate both methods.
LESSON SUMMARY
Pro/ENGINEER, like many other software packages, produces results that are only
as good as the information going in. Using standards and best practices, you can
master your design intent to give you robust, easy to change models and drawings.

There are many different files used or created in Pro/ENGINEER, but the most
common ones are Parts, Assemblies, Drawings, Sections and Formats. Parts are
the building blocks for assemblies and drawings and must always be present for
these others to work.

When designing in Pro/ENGINEER, you may choose to build your parts then
assemble them (a bottom-up approach to design), or you may wish to build your
parts in an assembly to provide a more accurate and complete fit (a top-down
approach to design). The type of project will determine which approach works best.
 Lesson

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the User Interface of
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0, file operations, viewing modes and how to spin, pan
and zoom in this release.
STARTING Pro/ENGINEER
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 is installed in the C:\ptc\proewf2 directory. On your
desktop, you will find the following shortcut.

When Pro/ENGINEER launches, it will start in the following directory.

C:\Data\proewf2

Every time you open up a new session of Pro/ENGINEER, a file is created that
captures every command, menu pick, and operation you perform. This file is called a
trail file, and it is created and stored in your C:\Data\trails folder. Trail files can be
used (with some limited degree of success) to restore work that is lost if you crash
out of Pro/ENGINEER without having saved, however most of the time, this is not
successful.

Trail files do not need to be saved. Since they take up some disk space, it is
recommended that you clean out your c:\trails directory from time to time.

USER INTERFACE
Once you launch Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0, you will see the following user
interface.
The following figure shows the different components of this interface when a model is
opened.
 The Wildfire 2.0 interface is made up of the following main areas (from top to bottom
and left to right):
• Title Bar – Lists the currently object, and indicates whether the object is
active.
• Menu Bar – Every command in Wildfire 2.0 can be accessed from the
menus at the top of the application.
• System Toobar – Contains icons that control system-wide functions, such
as the file operations, model display, datum display, window controls, etc.
• Navigator – Contains several different tools used to navigate through the
model or the interface, such as the model tree, layers, file explorer, favorites,
and web browser controls.
• Web Browser – This is a fully functional web browser. Upon the initial
startup of the application (or by clicking on the home icon), you can get to a
web page with helpful information regarding this release. It also doubles as
an information window for various tools in the software, such as a feature
information window, bill of material reports, and when you click on a folder in
the file explorer, it shows the contents in this browser.
• Working Window – This is the main working area in Pro/E. Your geometry
or drawing will appear in this window, and you select and build features in
this area.
• Feature Toolbar – Contains icons used to create or edit geometry. These
are context-sensitive, which means that as you are in a specific function, you
will see additional or fewer icons.
• Dashboard – Appears in most of the common feature creation modes.
Contains options and elements for defining features.
• Message Bar – Area where information is displayed in the form of prompts,
warnings, general information, etc.
• Status Bar – Provides additional information if necessary. It also displays
the tool tip when the mouse is placed over an icon, menu or geometry in the
main working window or in any of the other toolbars.
• Selection Filter – Used to select different filter options for picking. Displays
the total number of selected objects.

COLOR SCHEME
Every command or function in Wildfire 2.0 that displays graphically will have a
different color associated with it. For example, when you move your mouse over a
model, you will see geometry highlight in blue. Once you select geometry, it turns
red. As you create features, you will see a yellow preview of the geometry. Datum
planes have a positive brown side and a negative black side, etc.

For the purpose of being able to clearly print and read this training guide on most
Black & White LaserJet printers, most of the system colors will not appear in the
pages of this booklet. We will clearly describe colors that you should see at the time
you should see them, so you should be able to follow along very easily. The
following figure describes the convention that we will use for this guide.
FILE OPERATIONS
SET WORKING DIRECTORY

If you recall from the first section of this lesson, we mentioned that Pro/ENGINEER
Wildfire 2.0 starts up in the C:\Data\proewf2 folder. You can change over to any
folder on your computer after you open up the software. The folder that you change
to is called the Working Directory. If you choose not to change over to a new folder,
then the start up directory is the working directory.

To change your working directory, there are three ways to do this. Using the menu
bar, go to File, Set Working Directory, or click on the following icon in the system
toolbar.

With either of these options, you will get a new window that appears, as shown
below.
In this window, select the folder you wish to use as a working directory. You can use
the Directory Pull-Down to switch to a folder or network drive, use the Up One
Level icon to go up one folder level, or you can even create a new folder in the
current location using the Create New Folder icon.

Once you have selected or created the working directory folder, click on OK.

The third way to set your working directory is to go to your Navigator and access the
file explorer. Find the folder that you want to work out of, then hold down the right
mouse button over that folder and select Make Working Directory, as shown in the
following figure.

OPEN FILES

Opening files in Pro/ENGINEER is the same as in any windows application. Either

go to File, Open from the menu bar, or select on the following icon from the system
toolbar.
You will get a window that is very similar to the one you saw when setting your
working directory, as shown below.

Initially, all Pro/ENGINEER items (parts, assemblies, sections, drawings, formats,

etc.) will show up in the window for the current directory that you are in. If you want
to apply a filter to only see part files, use the Type Filter pull-down towards the
bottom of the window.

If you are browsing through other folders and wish to return to the current working
directory to look there, click on the Working Directory icon. To browse through
favorite locations that you set up, click on the Favorites icon.

You can also change the display type using the Change Display Options icon. This
would allow you to see a list, or icons, or details, etc.

In Session Memory

Every time you open up a file in Pro/ENGINEER, it gets stored into memory. This is
called Session Memory. The item does not have to be open to remain in memory.
To view what is currently in memory, go to the open file window, and click on the In
Session Memory icon (shown above). Only items that are in memory will be listed.

Preview

To see what the object looks like before opening it, you can click on the Preview
button in the lower right portion of this screen. It will expand the window open to the
right, and you will see the file, as shown in the figure at the top of the next page.
Once you find the file you want, either double-click on it using the left mouse button,
or click on it once to highlight it, then click on the Open button in the lower left of the
File Open window.

Another way you can open a file in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0 is to go to your file
explorer in your Navigator, locate the folder that contains your file, and click on that
folder once with the left mouse button. The contents of the folder will appear in the
Web Browser, as shown below.

To preview the geometry before opening it, click once on the file in the File Names
column. The preview appears at the top of the screen as shown at the top of the next
page.
To open the file, either double-click on it using the left mouse button, or drag the file
from this list out to the Working Window.

ERASE

As we mentioned previously, once you open up a file in a current session of

Pro/ENGINEER, it remains open until one of two things happens.
• You exit the application using File, Exit.
• You erase the object from memory.

Simply closing the file will not erase it from memory. To erase a file, go to File,
Erase from the menu bar. You will see two options for erase. These are:
• Current – Open erases the active file from memory (next topic).
• Not Displayed – Erases all objects that are not currently open.

EXAMPLE:
Suppose you open three part files, A.prt, B.prt and C.prt. All three files are currently
in session memory. If you were to close part B, it is still in memory. If C were the
active model, and you used File, Erase, Current, then C (and only C) would be
closed and erased from memory. If you used File, Erase, Not Displayed, then B
(and only B) would be erased from memory. A and C would remain open and in
memory.

ACTIVATE OBJECT

The object you are currently working on is considered the Active object. You can
have as many files open at the same time, but only one can be active at any time. To
activate an object, go to Window from the menu bar.

At the bottom of this menu, you will see a list of currently open objects, as shown
below.
The object that has the black circle to the left of it (currently shown as the
CROSS_FEED_STOP.PRT file in the figure at the bottom of the previous page) is
the active model.

To activate a different model in this list, simply select it from the list at the bottom. To
close a file, it must be the active file, then you can use Window, Close or File, Close
Window from the menu bar.

If you were to open a file at this point in time, it will become the active model
automatically. You might notice that you have icons in your Windows Start Bar on
your desktop for each of the objects that are currently open in Pro/ENGINEER.

If you were to select the icon in this Start Bar, it will bring that object to the front of the
Pro/ENGINEER interface, but it does not automatically make that model active. You
can activate it by going to Window, Activate from the menu bar once the file is in the
foreground.

You will be able to tell if the currently visible object is active by looking at the title bar
in the upper left corner. The following figure illustrates an active and inactive object
indicated by the title bar.

SAVE FILES

To save the current file, go to File, Save or click on the following icon in the system
toolbar.

In the message window, you will be shown the part that is being saved. Click on the
Enter key on the keyboard, or the green check mark to the right of the message
window.

File Versions
Most Pro/ENGINEER files append a number at the end of the file extension –
filename.prt.1 for example. Every time you save that object, a new file will be
created with the next higher integer – filename.prt.2 in this case.

Your working directory will start to fill up with versions of the same file. For example,
if you create a new part called mypart, and save it for the first time, you would see
the following in your working directory.

mypart.prt.1

As you continue to work with this part, you will save often. By the end of the day, you
may have saved this part 10 times, and so you would see the following in your
working directory.

mypart.prt.1 mypart.prt.3 mypart.prt.6

mypart.prt.9
mypart.prt.10 mypart.prt.4 mypart.prt.7
mypart.prt.2 mypart.prt.5 mypart.prt.8
You will notice that, sorted by name, the .10 file comes right after the .1 file. Be
aware of this if you decide to manually delete older versions.

DELETE FILES

Before you delete any Pro/ENGINEER files, be absolutely sure that no other Pro/E
files are dependent on the files you wish to delete. For example, suppose you
created an assembly and used a particular component. If you delete this part before
you take it out of the assembly, then the assembly will fail when you try to open it.

To delete a Pro/ENGINEER file (part, assembly or drawing), the best way to do this is
to go to the menu bar and select File, Delete. When you do this, you will see two
options.
• Old Versions – Delete all of the versions from the hard drive except the
most recent for the currently active file. This method purges old versions but
leaves the most recent in memory.
• All Versions – Delete all versions of the file from the hard drive, including
the most recent, and erase the current file from memory. This is a total loss
of data for this file.

It is not recommended that you blindly delete files from your hard drive through a
windows explorer unless you really know the relationships. It is recommended that
you purge your working directory once you are satisfied with the most recent version
of the file that you are working on. This will free up disk space.

SAVE A COPY

This command is used to do one of the following:

• Make an exact copy of the current object with a new name.
• Export the file into a different file type (such as IGES, STEP, STL, etc.)

With the current object open, go to File, Save A Copy from the menu bar. You will
see the following window.
To make an exact copy with a different name, first select the directory where the file
is going – or leave this step out to make the copy to your current working directory.
Then, enter a name in the New Name field. Once you are done, click on OK.

To export the model as a different file type, first select the directory where the file is
going – or leave this step out to create the new file in the current working directory.
Then, use the Type pull down to find the file type that you wish to create (IGES, for
example). The name should appear automatically in the New Name field with the
appropriate extension added. Click on OK to complete the file export.

BACKUP

The backup command creates the exact file that you are working with, but in a
different directory. The difference between a Backup and a Save A Copy is that a
Backup allows you to keep the same name, but Save a Copy forces you to specify a
different name.

The backup command is really useful if you need to make a duplicate copy of an
entire assembly, because it copies the assembly and all of its components to the
directory you specify.

To perform a backup, go to File, Backup from the menu bar. You will get the
following window.
Click on OK to complete the backup operation.

RENAME

You must really be aware of relationships when renaming in Pro/ENGINEER.

NEVER rename a part using a windows explorer, always rename through
Pro/ENGINEER.

When you rename a part file, you must have any assembly and/or drawing file also
open. If you do not, then the assembly or drawing will still be looking for the old file
name when it tries to open, and when it doesn’t find it, it will fail.

To rename the currently active file in Pro/ENGINEER, use File, Rename. This will
bring up the following window.

Enter a new name for the file in the New Name field, then select the option below
this. There are two options:
• Rename on disk and in session – renames the file in memory, and
renames it on the hard drive (for all versions that exist). This is the preferred
option for most renaming operations.
• Rename in session – renames the file only in memory.

There are only two reasons why you might want to rename in session only. The first
is if you accidentally renamed a part, and forgot to open the drawing or assembly file
that uses it, then you could rename the part to the old name temporarily in memory to
allow the assembly and drawing to open up, then rename it back to the new name
once those files are open. The net change would be zero for the part.

The other case would be if you wanted to perform a “Save A Copy” type of
command. If you rename the current file in memory only, then save it, it creates a
new file in the working directory. This might be useful if you already made changes
to an existing file, then realized that you forgot to save a copy of it first. By renaming
it in memory then saving it, you left the original file at its last save.

The proper order of operations should be followed when performing a rename on disk
and in session.
1. Open up the object to rename.
2. Open up all drawing or higher level assemblies where this object reports.
3. Rename the object then save it.
4. Change over to one of the other files (drawing or assembly) where the object
reports and verify that the name has been changed for these files, then save
them.
5. Repeat step 4 for every drawing or assembly file that contains the renamed
object.
6. Close all objects and erase session memory (not displayed).
7. Retrieve each file to make sure the rename was successful.

NEW FILES

To create a new file in Pro/ENGINEER, go to File, New from the menu bar, or click
on the following icon in the system toolbar.

This will bring up the figure at the top of the next page.
 In this window, start by selecting the primary type of file being created (Part,
Assembly, Drawing, Sketch). Our Pro/ENGINEER license only permits the following
primary types to be created:
• Sketch
• Part
• Assembly
• Drawing
• Format
• Report
• Layout
• Markup

Once you select the primary object type, the Sub-Type options will change to reflect
possible choices. In the figure above, we can see the sub-types for a part file. Select
the appropriate choice.

Finally, enter a name for the file. Always remember to do this so you can avoid a
rename condition later. Once you are done, click on OK to continue. You will now
see the following figure.

For this next window, the template should automatically select one of the following:
• Startpart – if you selected Part for the primary type, and Solid for the sub-
type.
• Sheetmetal – if you selected Part for the primary type, and Sheetmetal for
the sub-type.
• Startassy – if you selected Assembly for the primary type, and Design for
the sub-type.

If you selected Drawing for the primary type, there are no sub-types. We will talk
about all of these in more detail starting in the next chapter.

VIEWING MODES
There are four primary viewing modes in Pro/ENGINEER for Parts and Assemblies.
To select a viewing mode, pick one of the following icons in the system toolbar:
• Shaded – All external surfaces of the model are rendered and all
hidden edges and surfaces will not be visible.
 • No Hidden – All external edges of the model are shown in the primary
model color, but all hidden edges and surfaces will not be visible.

• Hidden Line – All external edges of the model are shown in the
primary color, while all hidden edges are displayed in a muted color.

• Wireframe – All edges of the model (external or hidden) are shown in

the primary color.

The following figure shows the four different viewing modes for a part file.

Shaded mode requires the least amount of time to display, and provides the best
results for spinning. Wireframe is the second fastest in terms of display and spin,
but is the least user friendly from a viewing standpoint.

MOUSE CONTROLS (SPIN, PAN & ZOOM)

LEFT MOUSE BUTTON

• Stand-alone, it is used to
select/deselect objects
• Ctrl + = Select/deselect
multiple objects
• Shift + = Select Seed and Boundary or Chain of objects
RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON

• Context sensitive
commands when held down
• Click to “Query Select”
through model where mouse
pointer is located
• Shift + = When selecting, it queries through multiple choices for the
selected object. For example, when a single edge is selected, it will
go through one-by-one, tangent chain, from-to chain, etc.

MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON (Standard Mouse)

• Used to accept selections or finish commands when clicked

3D Modes
• Used to spin
the model
when
dragged in
all directions
• Ctrl + = Zoom In/Out (drag mouse in front [F] or back [B] direction)
or Turn (drag mouse in Left [L] or right [R] direction – snaps to 90
degree locations).
• Shift + = Pan when dragged in all directions

2D Modes
• Used to pan when dragged in all directions
• Ctrl + = Zoom In/Out (drag mouse in front or back direction)

MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON (Wheel Mouse)

Same
functions as
regular
middle
mouse,
PLUS…
• By itself, it does quick zooming in and out when wheel is rolled
Front or Back
• Ctrl + = 2X Quick Zoom speed (for rapid zoom).
• Shift + = 0.5X Zoom Speed (for slower zoom).
 When spinning the model, you have two different ways to control the spin using the
spin center. The spin center on/off control is located in the system toolbar, and it
looks like the following.

When the Spin Center is turned ON, Wildfire 2.0 will always spin about the spin
center, usually located at the geometric center of the model. This is the easiest
spinning method to use, but does not give much control when you are zoomed into
the model.

When the Spin Center is turned OFF, Wildfire 2.0 will spin about the location of your
mouse cursor at the time you press down the middle mouse button/wheel. This
allows for more control of the spin, especially when zoomed in close enough that the
spin center is off the screen.

VIEW ORIENTATIONS
In addition to being able to spin, pan or zoom using the mouse and keyboard, you
have other ways to control the orientation of the model on the screen. This section
will discuss these different methods.

SAVED VIEWS

Built into the start part or start assembly, there are pre-defined saved views. These
are FRONT, BACK, TOP, BOTTOM, LEFT, RIGHT, ISOMETRIC and TRIMETRIC.
These views were created so the positive side of the default datum planes (which we
will talk about in lesson 6) faces in the orientation of its name. For example, the
FRONT datum plane’s positive side faces the FRONT orientation. The FRONT
datum plane’s negative side faces the BACK orientation.

To access saved views, click on the following icon in your system toolbar.

It will expand to show the views that are available to pick on, as shown below.

DEFAULT VIEW

The default view is a system-defined view that exists for all models, even if there are
no other saved views. Many times in Pro/ENGINEER, you will return to a default
orientation to make seeing or selecting easier. To go to the default view, click on the
following icon from the system toolbar.

PREVIOUS VIEW

To toggle between the current orientation and the last orientation, click on the
following icon in the system toolbar.

RE-ORIENT

To create new orientations, click on the re-orient tool in the system toolbar (the icon
shown below).

This will bring up the following window.

The default type of orientation type is Orient by Reference. The goal in this section
is to pick two planar surfaces or datum planes that are perpendicular to each other
and face them towards specified directions. Once you enter into this tool, you are
automatically asked to select the first reference, as we can see in the figure above.
Using the pull-down, we can change the direction the first reference will face. In this
case, the first reference will face the Front (or face the screen).

Look at the following figures to see an example of using this tool. Start by selecting
the first reference and its resulting orientation.
Once you select the first reference, it will appear in the field to the right of the
selection arrow. Next, select the orientation and reference for the perpendicular
direction. In the next figure, we will chose to face our reference towards the right,
therefore we will select the right side of the model, as shown below.

If the two references we selected are perpendicular to each other, the model should
snap to its new orientation, as shown below.

In addition to selecting references to re-orient our model, we can dynamically control

the spin, pan and zoom of our model by using the pull-down at the top of this
Orientation window, and selecting Dynamic Orient. This will change the window to
look like the following.
In the top portion, we can control the Pan of the model on the screen. In the second
section, we can contrl the Zoom, and in the third section, we can control the Spin.
Use the sliders or type in exact values in the spaces provided.

Under the Spin portion, you can select whether you are spinning about the spin
center or about the screen center.

Down at the bottom of the Orientation window, you can also access the Saved Views
functionality. Click on the blue bar where the name Saved Views appears to expand
or collapse it. Expanding it will show the following.

You can double-click on any of the pre-existing orientations to set the model to that
orientation, or type in a new name in the Name field, then click on Save to create
additional saved views.
 The last option at the top of this window is to change preferences for the re-orient
tool. When you select Preferences you see the following.

At the top of this window, select where the spin center will be. By default it is located
at the model center (geometric center of the model).

In the lower window, you can specify which orientation will be used for the default
view.

MISCELLANEOUS
PRINT

When printing in Pro/ENGINEER, use one of the three non-shaded modes for
printing parts or assemblies. To print, go to File, Print from the menu bar, or select
the following icon on the system toolbar.

This will bring up the following window.

The first thing you want to do is select the printer that you are going to print to. Do
this by selecting on the down arrow at the top, as shown in the following figure.
This list of printers is defined using Plotter Configuration Files (PCF). If you do not
see a printer listed that should be listed, please contact your system administrator.
Once you select your printer, the rest of the options on the Print window will become
active. To change any of the print job settings, click on the Configure button, which
will bring up the configuration for the current printer selected, as shown below.

There are three tabs on this window. Within this section, you can select paper size,
orientation, print zoom options, etc. The PCF files should be set up to use the
optimal print settings for the printer, including the correct paper size. You should not
have to change any settings in this window for most print jobs.

ZOOM CONTROLS

In addition to the dynamic orient and mouse controls, you have a few additional
options for zooming on the system toolbar. These are:
 • Window Zoom – Click the opposite corners of a box around any object
you want to zoom in on.

• Zoom Out – Each time you select this icon, it will zoom out a small
amount.

• Refit – Zooms out/in until all objects are visible and centered in the
working window. This does not work if you are in a sketch for the first feature
of the model.

REDRAW (REPAINT/REFRESH)

Occasionally, you will need to redraw your screen to eliminate any graphical blips or
ghost images, etc. This is also referred to as repaint or refresh. To redraw your
screen, click on the following icon in the system toolbar.

LESSON SUMMARY
When you start Pro/ENGINEER, you will be placed into a working directory. Change
over to the working directory you wish to use then start working.

When you save a file in Pro/ENGINEER, new versions of the file will appear in your
working directory. Use Delete, Old Versions to purge all versions except the most
recent.

If you must rename a file in Pro/ENGINEER, always make sure that any required files
are also open and in session. Start renames with the lowest level object (Part Files),
then rename assemblies, then drawings. Remember to save as you go.

To save session memory, erase non-displayed objects once you have saved and
closed them.

The middle mouse button (MMB) is used for spinning when used by itself. Use Ctrl
with the MMB to zoom, and Shift with the MMB to pan.

You can select from pre-existing saved views, or re-orient the model to create your
own saved views.

There are four viewing modes. Shading is the best for spinning, panning, zooming
and visualizing the model. Hidden line and No Hidden take longer to display.

EXERCISES
Once Pro/ENGINEER is opened, set your working directory to C:\Data\ProETrain.
 Click on this folder in the file explorer (navigator) to see the contents. Click once on
the Idler_Arm.prt part file to see the preview in the web browser. Try spinning the
model in the preview window.

Place your mouse over the icon to the left of the Idler_Arm part file and drag it into
the working window to open it.

Inside the working window, try spinning, panning and zooming using the mouse and
keyboard controls. Once you are done, go back to a default view. Try looking at the
different display modes. Use the Saved Views icon to go to a FRONT view.

Close the model but don’t exit out of Pro/ENGINEER. Use File, Erase, Not
Displayed once the file is closed to erase session memory.

Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about action-object versus

object-action selecting, query select, as well as pre-selecting.
ACTION-OBJECT / OBJECT-ACTION SELECTING
Some of the features in Pro/ENGINEER are created by selecting on an action first
(Insert, Blend, Surface, for example), then later you select your references, such as
curves, planes, etc.

In Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 2.0, most of the common feature types can also be
created using an Object-Action method of selecting. For example, to create a
surface copy, you would have to select your surfaces first, then click on the copy
icon.

In order to make Object-Action selecting easier, there is a Pre-Selecting function

that allows you to see a preview of the geometry you are going to select before you
select it.

PRE-SELECTION
 As you move your mouse over a model in the working window, you will see objects
highlight in blue. When you move your mouse past the object, the highlight
disappears, and a new one appears at the next location. This blue highlighting is
called Pre-Selection.

If you leave your cursor over a highlighted object long enough, a tool tip will appear
showing you the feature that is currently highlighted. In the following figure, we can
see a protrusion highlighted.

With the highlight visible on the feature or geometry we want to select, we use the left
mouse button to click on that object. The object will turn red, which indicates that it
has been selected, as shown below.

To remove any selections you may have made, click anywhere outside of the model
in the working window.

SELECTION FILTER
During pre-selection highlighting, you may see only features highlighting. This is due
to a filter that is applied by default, called Smart. We can see the selection filters in
the lower right corner of the Pro/ENGINEER interface, as shown below.

The smart filter performs a “Drill Down” approach to selecting. You begin by
selecting features (Protrusions, Cuts, Drafts, Rounds, etc.), then you pre-select
geometry, such as surfaces, edges, vertices, etc.
If we click on the pull-down arrow in this field, we can see the other filters that can be
applied.

The other, different filters are:

• Features – only features will be selectable.
• Geometry – only geometry (surfaces, edges, etc.) will be selectable.
• Datums – only datum geometry (planes, axes, points, curves, etc.) will be
selectable.
• Quilts – only surface quilts will be selectable
• Annotation – only notes, geometric tolerances, etc. will be selectable.

For example, if we change our selection filter to Geometry, then place our mouse
over the same protrusion as we did before, we will only see a surface pre-select
highlight, as shown in the figure below.

Then, if we click with our left mouse button to select the surface that is highlighted,
we see something slightly different than what we saw when we selected the
protrusion before.
 A surface, when selected, will shade or mesh, depending on what view display you
have set. In No Hidden, Hidden Line and Wireframe, the selected surface will mesh,
as we see in the figure above. In Shaded mode, the entire surface will shade a rose
color, as we can see in the following figure.

For the remainder of this training guide, we will only show figures in a non-shaded
mode (unless it is necessary for clarification to show it in shaded mode). This is due
to the ability for you to see these figures when reproduced on a black & white color
copier.

QUERY SELECT
Often times, what we want to select is not at the front of the model in the current
orientation. Instead of rotating the model around every time we want to select hidden
geometry, we can use a tool called Query Selection, which allows us to query
through possible objects until we see the one we want in a pre-selection highlight
(blue highlight).

For example, suppose I want to select the two surfaces of the hole indicated below.
If I have my selection filter set to Geometry, and place my cursor over the hole, I can
see that the back half of the hole can be picked without querying through the possible
choices, as shown below.

Now, I want to pick the other half. The first thing I need to do is hold down the Ctrl
key on my keyboard to select multiple objects. When I place my mouse cursor over
the end of the hole, only edges highlight in blue. I could zoom in or rotate and get a
clear view of the other half of the hole, but that would defeat the point to this
discussion.

Instead, I am going to place my mouse cursor over the model in an area that is in
front of the surface that I want to select. Imagine if the mouse cursor were a drill bit
going into the screen of the computer and into the model in its current orientation.
You want to place your cursor over the model so that as you “drill” down into the part,
you come in contact with the object you want to select.

The figure at the top of the next page shows a possible location that clearly sits in
front of the surface that we ultimately want to select.
Since the outside surface of the protrusion is in front of our hole, only the protrusion
surface highlights initially, as we can see in the figure above.

To query through the possible choices, click on the right mouse button (remember to
keep the Ctrl key pressed to select multiple objects). A single click results in the hole
surface highlighting, as shown below.

Now that the surface we want to select is highlighted in blue, we can click with the left
mouse button to select it, as shown below.

REMEMBER! – Even though we are working in a non-shaded mode, we still have

surfaces on this model. To select a surface, you want to pick out in the middle of the
surface and not near its edges, otherwise you might select an edge instead.
 This is one of the biggest mistakes new users make that come from 2-D or other
drawing packages. The following figure shows the correct and incorrect place to pick
for selecting a surface.

EDGE SELECTING
Using the same selecting techniques, we will talk about selecting edges. To start
with, you can select a filter, such as Geometry, which will allow you to pick just
edges, surfaces, etc. Then, bring your mouse over the edge to select. As with
surfaces, it will pre-highlight in blue, as shown below.

When you click with the left mouse button, the edge becomes selected, as indicated
by a bold red highlight, shown below.
You can hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple edges independently, however we
are going to demonstrate how to pick edge chains. If you hold down the Shift key,
then move your mouse cursor over to a different edge (in this case, on the same
surface), we will see different objects highlight, as shown below.

The first thing it looks for is any tangent chain of edges to the one we originally
selected. From the figure above, we can see that there are four other edges (two
straight edges at either end, and two circular edges around the corners) that connect
up to the first selected edge to form a tangent chain of edges. The Tool Tip indicates
Tangent.

If we query select (click with the right mouse button), we will see another possible
option for edges, which in this case is the entire set of edges that go around the top
surface (connected to the edge that we previously selected). The tool tip indicates
Surface Loop, as shown below.
Click again with the right mouse button, and we will see a From-To surface loop
starting from the selected edge and going around the top surface boundary until it
gets to the edge our mouse is currently over, as shown below.

Click one more time with the right mouse button, and we see the opposite surface
loop condition (going the other direction around the top surface boundary).

If this were the set of edges we wanted, we could now click with the left mouse button
to select it (remember, we are still holding down the Shift key on the keyboard.)
SEED AND BOUNDARY SURFACE SELECTING
One last method of selecting is to get all of the surfaces between two boundary
surfaces. One of the boundary surfaces actually lies within the set of surfaces to be
selected. This is known as the Seed surface.

The other surface lies at the external end of the surfaces to be selected, and is called
the Boundary surface.

The following figure illustrates the seed and boundary surface you would select to get
all of the internal surfaces of our cavity.

Therefore, we will begin by selecting the seed surface, as shown in the following
figure.
Next, hold down the Shift key and select the top surface of the part (the Boundary
surface). While the Shift key is still depressed, you should see the following.

Once you let go of the Shift key, the proper surfaces will be selected, as shown in
the next figure.
 The Boundary surface is never selected, only the Seed surface and all of the other
surfaces between the seed and the boundary. To select additional surfaces at this
point, use the Ctrl key. To deselect any of the selected surfaces, also use the Ctrl
key and select the surfaces to exclude. For example, selecting the back surface with
the Ctrl key gives us the figure at the top of the next page.

A RUNNING TOTAL
Within the selection filter area, we will see some text indicating how many objects are
currently selected. For example, if we were to select the following surfaces and
edges using the Ctrl key, we would have 8 items selected.
 In the selection filter area, we see text that says 8 Selected, as shown below.

If you double-click on the actual text, it opens up the window shown at the top of the
next page.

As you move your mouse over this list, the items will highlight in blue on the model
itself. You can remove any unwanted selections by selecting them in this list, then
clicking on the Remove button at the bottom.

LESSON SUMMARY
Many of the features in Pro/ENGINEER use an object-action method of selecting, or
selecting the surfaces or edges that you are going to act upon, then pick the feature
to create, such as picking on an edge, then picking the round tool.

You can pre-highlight objects before selecting them. This makes it easier to know
what you are going to pick. Use the selection filter in the lower right corner to pick
only on the types of objects you want.

Use Query select to drill down into the model to pick hard to reach items, or to scroll
through a set of possible edge chain options.
 Finally, use the Shift key to perform Seed and Boundary or Edge Chain selecting,
and use the Ctrl key to pick many individual items.

EXERCISES
Open up the Idler_Arm part file and go to a default view. Using techniques learned
in this lesson, try selecting all of the edges that touch the front face of the part, as
shown in the following figure.

Next, use whatever method you want to select the following surfaces (NOTE: This
can be done with a seed and boundary if you pick the right combination of surfaces).

Close out of this model when done, and erase session memory.
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the sketcher functionality.
STAND-ALONE SKETCHER
Many of the features in Pro/ENGINEER require you to sketch a profile then perform
some sort of operation on that sketch, such as extrude, revolve, sweep, etc. When
you are creating features that require a sketch, you enter sketch mode through the
feature.

To introduce sketcher functionality, we are going to create stand-alone sketches.

The only time you ever create stand-alone sketches (besides for training purposes),
is to create sketches that you can re-use. We will see examples of importing saved
sketches into feature creation later in this guide.

For now, please understand that you normally will not enter sketch mode as a stand-
alone process.

To start a sketch in stand-alone mode, go to File, New from the menu bar, or click on
the following icon in the system toolbar.

When the window pops up, select the Sketch type, which has no sub-types. In this
example, I am going to call this sketch Latch_Plate. The window will look like the
following.
 Clicking on OK brings you into the sketch. The figure at the top of the next page
shows the sketcher toolbar, which appears at the right side of the working window, in
the feature toolbar.

SKETCHER STEPS
To effectively use sketcher, it is highly recommended that you follow these steps in
this order.
1. Select/Deselect References – If entering sketch mode in the middle of
creating a feature, and there is already geometry in your model, then this
step applies. Otherwise, for stand-alone mode, skip this step.
2. Sketch Quickly – Your goal when sketching is to capture the basic shape,
but not to worry about looking perfect, or even getting close to the proper
size. If you spend too much time sketching, then you are using it incorrectly.
 3. Add Constraints – Add any constraints to the sketch to reduce the number
of necessary dimensions (such as equal length, or perpendicular, etc.)
4. Dimension Completely – As you will see, sketcher does not allow you to
under- or over-dimension a sketch, but you should use basic manufacturing
principles when adding dimensions. Remember design intent when doing
this, because the dimensions that you add in the sketch are the ones that
you are going to use to make changes later, so pick dimensioning references
wisely.
5. Modify Dimensions – Only after all of your entities are sketched,
constrained and fully dimensioned, should you modify the dimensions to their
proper values. Modifying the dimensions as you go may cause the sketch to
warp or fail regeneration. There are tools in the modify command to stop
regeneration or to scale the sketch. We will see this in more detail coming
up.
6. Finish – Once your sketch looks good, accept the sketch to continue the
feature creation, or to finish out of the stand-alone sketch.

LINE TOOLS
If you click on the Line Tools Icon, it will expand to reveal the following line types.

LINE

Using the left mouse button, click where the start of the line is, then move your
mouse to the location where the end of the line is. Click again with the left mouse
button to place the end of the line.

The line tool remains active, allowing you to pick the endpoint of the next line (which
starts at the end of the first line). Continue selecting locations for line endpoints until
you have sketched all lines, then use the middle mouse button to complete the line
tool.

The following figure shows sample lines. NOTE: The display of dimensions and
constraints have been turned off in the figure below. Each sketch segment contains
a blue dot locating its endpoint.

TWO-TANGENT LINE

This line entity is created tangent to two circles, arcs or combination of the two. With
the left mouse button click on one arc/circle, then move your mouse over to the other
arc/circle. The line should automatically adjust itself to snap tangent to both entities
(at both ends). Click with the left mouse button once you see the tangent snap occur.

This line tool remains selected, but not active (in other words, you must start a new
one by picking on the first arc/circle again, instead of continuing at the endpoint of the
previous line).

The following figure shows a sample two-tangent line between an arc and a circle.
NOTE: The display of constraints has been turned on, but the display of dimensions
still remains off. Notice the small “T” symbol that appears at each endpoint. This
shows the tangent condition.

CENTERLINE

Centerlines are used as snap lines, symmetry lines (for mirroring) or as axes of
revolution if creating a revolved feature. When you sketch a centerline, its length
occupies the entire working window.

You click once with the left mouse button to locate a point on the line, then move your
mouse until it is in the orientation that you want. Click with the left mouse button
again to finalize the line.

The centerline tool remains selected, but not active in the working window. The
following figure shows three centerlines. At their intersection, a sketch point appears
automatically.
RECTANGLE TOOL
The rectangle tool is only a single icon, shown below.

To use the rectangle tool, use the left mouse button to locate one corner of the
rectangle. Move your mouse to the location of the opposite corner, and then click
with the left mouse button again to finish the rectangle.

The following figure shows a sample sketched rectangle. Again, the display of
dimensions and constraints has been turned off.

CIRCLE TOOLS
If you click on the Circle Tools icon, it will expand to reveal the following tools.
CIRCLE

To use the circle tool, click with the left mouse button to locate the center of the
circle, then move your mouse to adjust the diameter. Click again with the left mouse
button to place the diameter.

The following figure shows a sample circle.

CONCENTRIC CIRCLE

The concentric circle tool creates a circle whose center lies at the center of an
already existing circle or arc. To create this, use the left mouse button to select an
existing circle or arc on the sketch. Then, move the mouse cursor to drag out the
diameter. Click with the left mouse button again to place the diameter.

This circle tool remains active, and allows you to create multiple circles with different
diameters located at the same center point. To cancel out of this circle, click on the
middle mouse button.

The following figure shows a concentric circle at the center of an existing arc.

THREE-POINT CIRCLE

The three point circle is created by clicking or selecting any three sketch points,
vertices or general locations on the sketch. When you click on the second point, the
circle will appear, and the third point locates the diameter.
The following figure shows a sample three-point circle using three random locations
on the sketch.

THREE-TANGENT CIRCLE

The three-tangent circle is created tangent to three entities (lines, arcs, etc.) To
create this, use the left mouse button to select the three entities the circle is to be
tangent to, and the circle is created automatically.

The following figure shows a sample three-tangent circle using two lines and an arc.

ELLIPSE

An ellipse is a circle that is longer in one direction and shorter in another (like an
egg). The ellipse tool in sketcher creates only horizontal or vertical ellipses, however
you can use the transform tools to rotate it 45 degrees, for example.

To create the ellipse, use the left mouse button to locate the center of the ellipse,
then move the mouse to locate the horizontal and vertical radii. If you move more to
the left or right away from the first point than you do up or down, you create a
horizontal ellipse, and the opposite creates a vertical ellipse.

The figure at the top of the next page shows a sample horizontal ellipse.
ARC TOOLS
Clicking on the arc tools icon expands it to reveal the following tools.

TANGENT-END / THREE-POINT

This general arc tool gives you two different options. The Tangent-End arc tool
creates an arc that is tangent to an existing line or arc at its endpoint. To create this
arc, use the left mouse button to select the open end of an existing line or arc
segment. When you do this, a special symbol appears at the end, which looks like a
green circle with a big “X” through it, as shown below.

The “X” breaks up the circle into quadrants. Depending on which quadrant you move
your mouse out from, you will either get a tangent arc or a three-point arc. The
following figure shows the quadrants that affect the result.

To create the tangent arc, bring your mouse out of the circle in the quadrant at the
end of the line segment (indicated above), and then use the left mouse button to
locate the free end of the arc.
The following figure shows the resulting tangent-end arc. Note the “T” symbol at the
intersection of the arc and line segments. This is the tangent constraint.

The Three-Point arc is created by picking on the two endpoints of the arc, then
dragging out the radius. When starting from an existing line or arc segment, be sure
to come out of the quadrants to the side of the existing segment to avoid a tangent-
end arc. The following figure shows two three-point arcs (one from an existing
segment, and the other just by itself.

CONCENTRIC

A concentric arc is created by using the left mouse button to select on an existing arc
or circle, then move the mouse cursor to drag out the radius. While the radius shows
up in a dashed circle, use the left mouse button to select the start of the arc, then
move your mouse to locate the end of the arc. Click with the left mouse button to
place the end of the arc.

As with the concentric circle tool, the concentric arc tool remains active, allowing you
to create multiple concentric arcs on the same center. To finish out of this tool, use
the middle mouse button once you have completed your desired arc(s).

The following figure shows a concentric arc using an existing circle to determine the
arc center.
CENTER-ENDS

The center-ends arc is created by using the left mouse button to select the center of
the arc. Move your mouse cursor to drag out the radius of the arc (which is indicated
by a dashed circle), as shown in the following figure.

Use the left mouse button to select the start point of the arc, then move your mouse
to locate the end point. Once you have located your end point, click with the left
mouse button to place this end point. The figure below shows the resulting center-
end arc.

THREE-TANGENT

Similar to a three-tangent circle, a three-tangent arc is created by using the left

mouse button to select three entities the arc will be tangent to. The first two points
determine the endpoints of the arc, while the third point selected is used to determine
the radius. The following figure shows a three-tangent arc using two line segments
and an arc.
 The “T” constraint symbols appear at the location where the tangency condition
exists.
CONIC

A conic arc is an arc that does not have a circular profile to it (similar to an ellipse).
You create the conic arc by using the left mouse button to pick the two endpoints of
the arc, then drag out the radius. A centerline is created automatically through the
endpoints. The following figure shows a sample conic arc.

FILLET TOOLS
Expanding the fillet tools icon reveals the following tools.

CIRCULAR

A circular fillet creates an arc tangent to two entities (lines, circles, other arcs, etc.)
that has a circular profile. The result is the removal of the corner (or projected corner
if the two entities are currently not intersecting) and the creation of the arc.
 To create, use the left mouse button to select the two entities at the location where
you want the fillet. The fillet will be created automatically using a best-fit method.
The figure below shows a sample circular fillet.

CONICAL

The conical fillet is created the same way you create a circular fillet. The only
difference is that the resulting fillet does not assume a circular profile, and therefore
does not have to do a best fit.

The following figure shows a sample conical fillet.

SPLINE TOOL
The spline tool is used to create a continuous, tangent entity that passes through
specified points. To create a spline, pick on the following icon.

Then, use the left mouse button to select points in a row. As the points are selected,
the spline will update to remain tangent and continuous (no sharp corners). Once
you are done selecting points, use the middle mouse button to complete the spline.
 The following figure shows a sample spline.

SPECIAL ENTITY TOOLS

Clicking on the icon will reveal two special sketcher tools, as shown below.

POINT

A sketcher point is used in various ways. One simple way it is used is to create a
snap point to tie multiple entities together. For example, you might use a point to
force an arc to lie on a line segment.

Sketcher points are also used to create Datum points if you use the “Sketched Datum
Point” feature.

Another use for sketcher points would be to create blend vertices. This is, for
example, when you blend a square into a triangle, you have four endpoints in one
entity but only three in the other. The blend vertex forces two entities in the square to
connect up to a single vertex in the triangle.

The following figure shows a point used to tie two entities together, and a point all by
itself.
 COORDINATE SYSTEM

A sketched coordinate system is used for some specialized features, such as

torroidal bends, helical sweeps, general blends, etc. To sketch a coordinate system,
pick the location where you want the coordinate system. The coordinate system
always has the X-Y arrows in the sketch, and Z points outwards. The following figure
shows a sketched coordinate system.

USE EDGE / OFFSET EDGE TOOLS

When we are sketching a new feature in a model that already has geometry, we have
the ability to use existing edges in the model as a basis for the sketch entities.
Clicking on the Use Edge / Offset Edge icon shows us the two tools.

USE EDGE

To create a sketched entity by exactly placing it on top of existing edges in the model,
use this tool. Click with the left mouse button on the model edges you wish to use.
The complete edge will be copied into the sketch, and a backwards “S” symbol
appears on the edge, indicating that it is a use edge.

The following figure illustrates this. NOTE: The existing model edges are blue in this
figure, and the sketched entities are black.
OFFSET EDGE

To create a sketched entity by offsetting existing edges in the model, use this tool.
When you click on the Offset Edge icon, you get the following menu choices (which
you also got for the Use Edge command as well).

If you use Single you will pick on an edge, then specify the offset distance for that
single edge. To get all of the edges around a surface, select Loop, then specify the
overall offset distance for all edges.

To select a chain of edges, pick on Chain, then pick the first edge in the chain,
followed by the last edge in the chain, as shown in the figure at the top of the next
page.

A new menu will appear giving you the choice to accept the highlight as it currently
shows, or to toggle through other possible edge chains based on the two segments
you selected. The menu looks like the following.
 Once you accept the chain, a red arrow will appear on the sketch, and the message
window will prompt you to enter an offset value. The direction of the arrow indicates
a positive offset. The following figure shows this arrow.

If we were to enter a positive value for the offset distance, then our sketch entities
would appear outside of the existing model. If we enter a negative value, then our
entities offset towards the inside of the model. The following figure shows a negative
offset value entered. Again, note the backwards “S” symbol indicating that these
edges are offset.

DIMENSION TOOL
As you sketch, dimensions should appear on the model automatically. These
dimensions initially appear gray and muted. This is known as a weak dimension.
Weak dimensions are added to ensure that the sketch is always fully defined (no
over- or under-dimensioning).

The following figure shows an example of weak dimensions applied to a sketch

before any dimensions were manually applied.
Let’s take a minute to break down what we see above. We can see the existing
model geometry (in blue), and the sketched entities (the lines that form a sort of “L”
shape).

We can see some constraints that are already on the sketch (the “H” and “V”
symbols).

In addition, we can see two dashed lines. These lines are sketch references. We will
talk about these later in this lesson.

There are two sets of dimensions that you will have when you sketch to create a
feature in an existing model. These are:
• Locating Dimensions – Dimensions that locate the sketch with respect to
existing geometry. Often, these dimensions go between the sketch
references and the sketched geometry.
• Shape/Size Dimensions – Dimensions that control the shape and size of
the sketch that we made.

You may not always have locating dimensions if you constrain the sketch to existing
references or geometry (such as using a Use Edge or Offset Edge tool).

Initially, all of these dimensions are weak. You want to make sure that you never
leave weak dimensions in your sketch, because they are not stable, and could
disappear. We will demonstrate this as we start to add dimensions.

NORMAL DIMENSIONS

To create normal dimensions, click on the following icon in the sketcher toolbar.
Click on the entities to dimension using the left mouse button, then place the
dimension using the middle mouse button. Now, we will demonstrate the different
types of dimensioning schemes.

Linear Dimensions

Linear dimensions measure the distance between two entities in a single distance, or
the length of a line segment. The following figures illustrate linear dimensions.

results in…

The strong dimension shows up in a creamy yellow on the sketch (shown in black in
this training guide). Notice how one of our weak dimensions disappeared? The
weak 2.046 dimension in the first figure went away once we added our strong
dimension, because it maintained a fully-defined sketch. We could have just as
easily lost the 4.092 dimension instead of the one we did lose.

The fact that weak dimensions can arbitrarily disappear when we add strong
dimensions is the primary reason we want to make sure all the dimensions are
strong.
We don’t have to redo create a dimension if we already have a weak dimension
where we need one. To make the weak dimension strong, we can either modify the
dimension, or force it to be strong.

To force a weak dimension to be strong, first select the dimension so it highlights in

red, then click with the right mouse button to see a list of options. Select the Strong
option to make this dimension strong, as shown below.

Once we do this, the dimension should turn creamy yellow (black in our case), as we
can see in the following figure.

To create a dimension for the length of a line, click once on that line with the left
mouse button, the place the dimension using the middle mouse button. The following
figure illustrates this.
You can also create linear dimensions by picking on two arc/circle centers or two
vertices. The following figure illustrates a linear dimension between two vertices.

Angular Dimensions

To create an angle dimension between two entities, click on the two entities with the
left mouse button, the place the dimension in the correct location with the right mouse
button. The location determines what type of angle you are going to get.

Consider the sketch below.

There are four possible places to specify and angle on this sketch. The following
figure shows the different scenarios for specifying the location to get the different
angles.

In the figure above, you select both line segments with the left mouse button, and if
you click with the middle mouse button in the shaded area, you get the resulting
angle dimension shown to the right of that figure.
Radius/Diameter Dimensions

To create a radius dimension on an arc or circle, click once on the arc or circle with
the left mouse button, and then place the dimension with the middle mouse button.

To create a diameter dimension on an arc or circle, click twice on the arc or circle
with the left mouse button, and then place the dimension with the middle mouse
button.

The following figure illustrates this.

REFERENCE DIMENSIONS

If you need to call out more dimensions than are necessary for the sketch to be fully
defined, you should use reference dimensions.

Reference dimensions, unlike normal dimensions, can not be modified directly. They
are what are called driven dimensions. Changing normal dimensions will cause the
reference dimension to update.

A reference dimension is created exactly the same as normal dimensions (from a

standpoint of picking with the left mouse button and placing with the middle mouse
button), but to access reference dimensions, go to Sketch, Dimension, Reference
from the menu bar at the top.

Then, pick your references. The following figure shows a reference dimension.
Notice how reference dimensions have parenthesis “( )” around them?

ORDINATE DIMENSIONS

Typically, you use ordinate dimensioning to reduce the screen clutter on a drawing.
These are very useful for objects with hole patterns, or many, complex shapes.

To start an ordinate dimension, we need to create Baseline dimensions. A Baseline

dimension marks the “Zero” location from which all ordinate dimensions are
measured from. There are typically two baseline dimensions in an “X-Y” coordinate
system, one that determines the horizontal zero and the other that determines the
vertical zero.

The following figures show the difference between linear and ordinate dimensioning
(maintaining the same design intent).

Linear Dimensioning Scheme

 Ordinate Dimensioning Scheme

Notice how much cleaner the ordinate dimensioning looks? You can also create a
combination of the two. The following figure shows this for the same sketch,
preserving design intent.

Would you want to do this? You’ll notice that in the figure above, ordinate
dimensioning is used for the hole locations, but the rest of the model uses linear
dimensions. Perhaps on your drawing, you may have a separate view detailing the
hole pattern, and may wish to use ordinate dimensions for that view, but for the other
view that calls out the overall dimensions of the part, you may wish to maintain the
linear dimensioning scheme.
My recommendation is to reduce the number of views in the drawing that it takes to
CLEARLY call out your design intent, and using ordinate dimensioning across the
board may accomplish this where linear dimensions may be too messy.

To create ordinate dimensions, go to Sketch, Dimension, Baseline, and then click

on the entity with the left mouse button that represents one of the “Zero” locations.
Place the “0.000” dimension along the entities’ direction, as shown in the figure
below.

The baseline dimensioning tool remains active, so you can simply pick the next line
and place the dimension, as shown below.

Once you have your baseline dimensions created, you can create the ordinate
dimensions. To do this, click on the dimension icon in the sketcher toolbar (just like
we do to create normal dimensions), then click in this order.
1. Pick on the baseline dimension, with the left mouse button, that runs in the
same direction as the ordinate dimension you wish to create.
2. Pick on the entity to dimension with the left mouse button.
3. Use the middle mouse button to place the dimension.

The following figure illustrates this.

 Repeat this process to create the other ordinate dimension; (pick the other baseline
to start, followed by the top edge, and then place the dimension).

MODIFY TOOL
The easiest way to modify a dimension in the sketch is to double-click on that
dimension with the left mouse button and type in a new value. Once you hit the
Enter key (after modifying the value), your sketch should automatically regenerate to
reflect this change.

The following figure shows what the screen would look like once you double-click on
the dimension.

Once you modify a dimension, it becomes strong (if it was previously weak).
MODIFY TOOL ICON

If you have a complex sketch, sometimes modifying dimensions using the double-
click method causes the sketch to distort. Sometimes, you can not modify a
dimension value if the starting value and ending value are so drastically different that
the sketch can not successfully regenerate.

In these cases, you will want to use the modify tool by picking on the following icon in
the sketcher toolbar.

Before using this tool, you have two choices. You can either select the icon, then
select on the dimensions to modify, or use the select tool and the Ctrl key on your
keyboard to select all of the dimensions ahead of time and then click on the icon.

We will do the latter for this example. We will modify all of the dimensions in the
figure below.

To do this, use the select tool ( ), and then drag a box around the entire sketch.
When you release the left mouse button, all entities and dimensions will highlight in
red. At this time, click on the modify tool icon.

A window will appear. I have moved this window next to the sketch so you can see
both simultaneously, as shown below.
 You will notice that all dimensions that are highlighted are listed in this window. One
of them is currently selected (indicated by the blue shading in the field). On the
sketch itself, the selected dimension will have a box around it (currently the total
height dimension).

The components of this window are shown in the following figure.

You can change the dimensions by typing a new value in the field provided, or by
moving the sliders to the right of the dimension to dynamically update them. We
want to pay close attention to the two options in the lower left, which are:
• Regenerate – By default this is selected (green check mark). Turn this off to
prevent the sketch from automatically regenerating as you modify the
dimension values. This will let you modify all of the dimensions and then
regenerate the sketch all at once.
• Lock Scale – To use, turn this on BEFORE modifying any dimension
values. Once activated, the first dimension you modify will drive all other
dimensions to update so the sketch maintains its current aspect ratio.

For example, suppose you have a rectangle that is 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.
The length to width ratio is 2:1. If we really want the length to be 200 inches long, to
maintain the same aspect ratio, the width would have to be 100.

If we were to click on Lock Scale, then modify the length dimension to 200, the width
would automatically update to 100. This is very useful if you need to make a drastic
dimension change and you don’t want your entire sketch to distort or warp on you.

CONSTRAIN TOOL
As we sketch in Pro/ENGINEER, we will notice some constraints that appear
automatically. Pro/ENGINEER’s sketcher tool is smart enough to make some
assumptions (which may not be what you ultimately want sometimes).

For example, if you sketch a line approximately in the horizontal direction, sketcher
will assume you want a horizontal line and snap it to that automatically. An “H”
symbol will appear on the line when this occurs. If you don’t want a horizontal line,
then exaggerate your line so it is more of a 30 degree angle (for example) with the
horizontal.

You can disable an automatic constraint by simply selecting on it after you sketch so
it highlights, and press the Delete key on your keyboard. For example, if you
sketched a horizontal line, and really wanted it to be angled, you would click on the
“H” symbol so it highlights in red, then delete it.

To add additional constraints to your sketch that might not have been “assumed” click
on the following icon.

This will bring up the following window.

The different tools are:

• Vertical Line / Line up Vertically – Make any line segment a vertical line or
take two vertices and line them up on an invisible vertical line.
• Horizontal Line / Line up Horizontally – Make any line segment a
horizontal line, or take two vertices and line them up on an invisible
horizontal line.
• Perpendicular – Take two entities and make them perpendicular to each
other.
• Tangent – Take two entities and make them tangent to each other (usually
an arc to a line, an arc to an arc, or a circle to a line or arc).
• Midpoint – Force a point, coordinate system or entity endpoint and make it
at the midpoint of another entity.
• Collinear / Aligned – Make two line segments line up with each other, or
place the endpoint of an entity and snap it to another entity (anywhere on
that entity).
• Symmetric – Make two vertices lie equidistant from a sketched centerline to
create a “mirror” effect.
• Equal Length / Radii – Make two line segments equal in length, or make
two circles or arcs or combination of both equal in radii.
• Parallel – Make two line segments parallel to each other.
To demonstrate this, look at the following initial sketch.

The display of dimensions has been turned off so we can more clearly see the
constraints that are on the entities. As we can see, there are a few horizontal and
vertical constraints added automatically as we sketched this profile.

Now, suppose we want the bottom line to be horizontal, the three top horizontal lines
to be equal in length, and finally the top left and top right horizontal lines to line up
with each other.

First, we’ll address the equal length lines. Start by clicking on the constraint icon that
represents Equal Length / Radii. Then, select the two lines shown in the following
figure.

The lines should snap to be the same length, and an L# symbol appears next to each
line. The # in this case represents a number that is sequential every time this
constraint is uniquely applied. Since this is the first equal length condition, # = 1, as
shown in the following figure.
Now, we are going to make the third horizontal line equal to the first two. By
selecting the Equal Length / Radii tool (which should still be selected from the
previous time), and picking on one of the existing “L1” lines, we will force the third to
be the same condition. The following figure shows what we are selecting.

When we do this, we get the following result.

You can see that the third line also has a L1 applied to it instead of L2. The reason
for this is that all three lines are the same length. If we had picked two lines that had
no “equal” condition on it, then we would have seen two “L2” constraints on the
sketch.
To make the bottom line a horizontal line, pick on the Horizontal Line / Line up
Horizontally constraint, then pick on the edge, as shown below.

Once we do this, an “H” should appear on this line, and it will snap to a horizontal
orientation, as shown in the following figure.

Finally, we will use the same constraint tool to line up the left and right top horizontal
lines. We will pick on two vertices to do this, as shown below.

The result will be the following.

The little rectangle icons facing each other is the symbol for this constraint. These
same rectangles will appear for the Collinear constraint when two lines are selected,
but the icon for Aligned looks different.

If we turn the view of dimensions back on, we can see that we only have three
dimensions left.

Compare that to the original sketch before we started adding constraints.

Because we are not allowed to over-dimension the model, the addition of constraints
has forced many of the weak dimensions to disappear.
 The following table shows the symbols that will appear for each type of constraint.

Constraint Type Symbol(s)

Vertical Line / Line up Vertically

,

Horizontal Line / Line up Horizontally ,

Perpendicular

Tangent

Midpoint

Collinear / Aligned
, ,

Symmetric

Equal Length / Radii ,

Parallel

Within the constraint window, there is a button called Explain. If you click on this
button, then on any constraint symbol on the sketch, it will highlight the entities that
are affected by that constraint, and in the message window, it will describe the
condition that has been set.

For example, if you click on an L1 symbol, it will highlight two or more line entities,
and the message window will say “Highlighted linear segments have equal lengths.”

TEXT TOOL
To create logos, part markings, and other text-type features on the model, you will
probably have to sketch text at some point in time. This tool is used for that purpose.

To start creating text in your sketch, click on the icon shown below.
Then, sketch a line that represents the start of the text. The first point of the line that
you pick represents the lower left corner of the text as it reads from left to right, as
shown below.

The second point on the line represents the height and orientation of the text. If you
sketch a vertical line straight up (as we see in the figure above), then the text will be
readable from left to right.

If we sketch the line straight down, the text will be upside down and backwards. If
you sketch a slanted line, then the text will be at an angle.

Once we sketch the line, we see a window appear that looks like the following.

In the top field, type in the words you want for the text. In the middle section, you can
change the font used, the aspect ratio (the width of the word), and the slant angle (to
control italics). You can use any True-Type fonts (like you might find in Microsoft
Word). See your system administrator if you need a font added to the list.

The following figure shows text using CG Times (Times New Roman equivalent).

You can also get your text to follow a sketched curve (spline, arc, etc.) Suppose we
want to have the text follow a three-point arc. We sketch the arc, then click on the
text tool. The start point of our text will be at the left end of the arc, and we will
sketch a line perpendicular to the arc (look for the perpendicular constraint symbol to
appear as we sketch). Once we sketch the line, our text window appears, and we
enter the text, but we notice the text is still perpendicular to the line that we sketched,
as shown in the figure at the top of the next page.
 In the text window, click on the Place Along Curve option, then select the arc. The
text will automatically wrap around this arc. Use the Aspect Ratio slider to get the
text to fit on the line. The result is shown below.

Once you finish, click on the green check mark to complete the text, then adjust the
height of the text by modifying the dimension, or dragging the top end of the line that
starts the text. To modify the text (get back to the text window), click on the modify
tool icon, then pick on one of the letters.

TRIM TOOLS
If you click on the trim tool icon, you see the following trim options.

DYNAMIC TRIM

The dynamic trim tool is used to eliminate portions of the sketch you do not want to
keep by clicking on the items or drawing a path through the items. Take the following
sketch for an example.
Suppose we only want to keep the portion in the middle where all of the lines
intersect. We would select the dynamic trim icon, then either pick on all of the
outside portions of the lines one-by-one, or draw a path that goes through the outside
sections at once, as shown below.

Once we are finished dragging the path around the part, let go of the mouse. The
result will be as follows.

CORNER TRIM

The corner trim tool is both a trim for intersecting entities, or an extend for non-
intersecting entities. For this tool, you want to select on the part of the entity that is
going to remain after the trim. For example, look at the following sketch.

We want to connect up the two line segments (extend), and then trim away the small
portion of the line that lies past the arc intersection. Therefore we would use the
corner trim tool and select in the areas indicated in the following figure.
 The resulting sketch after this trim will look like the following.

DIVIDE TOOL

The divide tool is used to break up a single sketched entity into multiple entities. You
might use this when sketching for a blend feature, because the number of entities
has to be equal. Therefore, if you were blending a circle to a square, the circle would
have to be divided into four sections.

The following figure shows where you might pick on a line to divide it, and then its
resulting sketch after the divide.

results in…

TRANSFORM TOOLS
Selecting on the transform tools icon gives you the following choices.
MIRROR

This tool is used to mirror selected entities about a sketched centerline. You always
want to take advantage of symmetry in your models, and this is a great way to save
time in sketch mode.

To use the mirror tool, select all of the entities you wish to mirror, click on the mirror
tool icon, and then click on the centerline that acts as the mirroring plane. The
following sketch is an example of how the mirror tool works.

results in…

SCALE AND ROTATE

This tool is used to resize, move and/or rotate an existing set of entities in the
sketch. To use, select all of the entities you wish to affect, then click on the scale and
rotate tool icon. Enter the appropriate scaling factor and/or angle, or dynamically
drag these values on the screen.

To demonstrate this, look at the following sketch.

Using the select tool, we will drag a box around the entire sketch, and then click on
the Scale and Rotate icon. The dimensions disappear from the sketch temporarily,
and three symbols appear, as shown in the figure at the top of the next page.

Using the left mouse button, we can select once on any of these items then move the
mouse cursor to see it dynamically change. Once we are done, click again with the
left mouse button to place the entity at its new location/orientation/size.

At the same time we see these symbols, a window pops up in the upper right corner.
It looks like the following.

We can type in a value for the scale factor or rotation angle. In this example, we will
enter a Scale of 1.5, and a Rotate value of 45 degrees. Once we are done, we will
click on the green check mark. Our sketch now looks like the following.
We can see that the dimensions are now 1.5 times larger, and the rectangle has
been rotated 45 degrees. Since we don’t have any other entities in our sketch, a
weak dimension had to be added to account for the rotation, and we can see this in
the figure above.

COPY

The last transformation tool is the copy tool. To use this, select the entities you wish
to copy, and then click on the copy icon. It performs a “Copy and Paste” operation
right in the sketch, and the new copy will appear in the upper left corner of the sketch
with the same symbols we saw in the Scale and Rotate tool.

Use the same techniques to move, scale or rotate the copied entities. To
demonstrate this, look at the following initial sketch.

We want to make a copy of the inside closed set of entities. Therefore, we use the
select tool, and we drag a box around these entities to select them. Once they are
selected, we click on the Copy tool, and we can see a copy of these entities appear
in the upper left corner, as shown in the following figure.
 Using the dynamic move and rotate symbols, I will locate the copied entities the way I
need them, as shown below.

Once they look the way I want them, I click on the green check mark in the pop-up
window, and my sketch looks like the following.

ACCEPT / CANCEL
When we are finally done with our sketch, we will click on the accept icon, which
looks like the following.

If we were in a sketch that was part of a feature creation method, such as an Extrude
feature, then we would be placed in the next sequence of events for creating that
feature. If we are in a stand-alone sketch and click on this icon, we are placed back
 out into the Pro/ENGINEER interface, ready to open a new file or activate an already
open file.

To cancel out of a sketch, click on the following icon.

You will be asked to confirm the cancel of the sketch. If you accidentally cancel the
sketch, it should still be in session memory, and you can simply open it again.

SKETCH MENU
So far, we have spent a great deal of time going over the sketcher toolbar. Many of
these same functions are available in the Sketch menu, located in the menu bar.
The sketch menu has a few functions, however, that are not icons. This section will
talk about some of these.

CENTERLINE TANGENT

This tool creates a centerline tangent to two entities. Use Sketch, Line, Centerline
Tangent from the menu bar to access this tool. Use the left mouse button to select
the two entities that the centerline will be tangent to. The centerline will still span the
entire sketch window. The following figure shows a sample centerline tangent entity.

AXIS POINT

An axis point is a sketched point that, when extruded, generates a datum axis on the
model. We will learn more about datum axes later, but the following figure illustrates
this.

Use Sketch, Axis Point from the menu bar to create this entity. NOTE: This only is
available if you are currently sketching as part of an extrude feature, it does not work
in stand-alone sketch mode.
AXIS OF REVOLUTION

When you create a sketch for a revolved feature, you must create a centerline that
acts as the axis of revolution. By default, the first centerline that you sketch becomes
the axis of revolution. If, by mistake, you realize that you didn’t sketch an axis of
revolution, and you already have several centerlines on your sketch, you can use this
feature to specify a different axis of revolution.

Click on the centerline that you wish to use, and then select Sketch, Feature Tools,
Axis of Revolution from the menu bar to create this entity. The following figure
illustrates this. NOTE: This also will not work if you are in a stand-alone sketch, it
only works if you are in the sketch to create a revolved feature.

TOGGLE SECTION

When you create a parallel blend feature, you must sketch at least two different
sections. Every section that you create is done in a single sketch. To tell
Pro/ENGINEER which sketched entities belong to one sketch and which belong to
another, we toggle between sketches.

To toggle between sections, go to Sketch, Feature Tools, Toggle Section from the
menu bar. Again, this will only work if you are trying to create a blended feature, not
in stand-alone sketch mode.
The current sketch is in the color of the sketched entities (yellow in Wildfire 2.0),
while the inactive sketch becomes a muted gray color (similar to the weak
dimensions). Suppose we want to blend between a circle and a rectangle. We might
start by sketching the circle, then use Sketch, Feature Tools, Toggle Section. The
circle becomes a muted gray color, and then we sketch the rectangle, which is still in
the primary sketch color (in this guide that will be black). The following figure
demonstrates this.
Using the Toggle Section command again will cause the circle to become the active
sketch, and the rectangle will become the inactive sketch. We will see more of this
when we get to the blend feature.

START POINT

In several features in Pro/ENGINEER, we must define a vertex that acts as the

starting point of our sketch. We can see this in the figure above for Toggle Section.
The bold arrow pointing towards the right from the upper left vertex is the symbol for
a start point.

To change the start point, we select a different vertex on the sketch, and then use
Sketch, Feature Tools, Start Point. The arrow will switch to that new vertex.

BLEND VERTEX

A blend vertex is used in the blend feature sketch to force multiple entity sections to
converge into fewer entity sections. For example, blending a square into a triangle
forces two corners of the square to converge into one corner of the triangle.

To specify which corner of the triangle will accept the two corners of the square, we
select that vertex, and then use Sketch, Feature Tools, Blend Vertex. The blend
vertex is represented by a larger circle around the vertex selected. The following
figure shows the blend vertex and the start points for this example.

DATA FROM FILE

To re-use saved sketches, or to import neutral data into your sketch (such as IGES,
DXF, Adobe Illustrator, Images, etc.) use Sketch, Data From File. This will bring up
the following window.
Each data type that we bring in prompts us for different options, so we will only talk
about inserting saved Pro/ENGINEER sections (.sec files). When you select the file
you wish to bring in, it will look and behave exactly the same as the Scale and
Rotate or Copy tools under the Transform icon.

Scale, move and/or rotate the sketch that you are bringing in, and then click on the
green check mark in the pop-up window to place the sketched entities. Continue to
add/remove from this sketch as necessary, and then accept it once you are done.

This is the way you will bring in the logo sections, part markings, recycle symbols,
etc.

OPTIONS

The last item in the Sketch menu is the sketcher options or preferences. When you
select this option, you will get the following window.

There are three tabs: Display, Constraints, and Parameters. On the display tab,
we can toggle on/off the display of sketched entities. We can see that we currently
do not have dimensions or constraints shown in our sketch.

The second tab, entitled Constraints, looks like the following.

In this section, you can disable automatic constraints while sketching. Right now,
sketcher can assume any one of the above conditions if it looks like that is your
intention. I would recommend exaggerating your sketch instead of turning off
automatic constraints.

The third tab is the Parameters tab, which looks like the following.

At the top of this section, we can define the grid type, origin and angle. The default
grid type is Cartesian, which creates an X-Y sketching grid. The other option is
Polar, which can be used to help you sketch entities which predominantly lie around
an axis normal to the screen.
 In the second section, we can define the grid spacing. This only helps you if you turn
on the display of the grid, and set the sketch to snap to grid. These settings are on
the first tab.

In the third section, we can define the number of decimal places for our sketcher
dimensions, and the relative accuracy of the sketch. This is useful if you are
sketching very small entities in the same sketch where you have much larger
entities. The smaller entities might appear to Pro/ENGINEER as having zero length.
Increasing or decreasing this number may help fix sketch regeneration errors.

EDIT MENU
The Edit menu in the menu bar has some of the sketcher options, such as Modify
and Trim. There is one additional item that is very important to discuss here. That is
Replace.

REPLACE

If you are creating a model, and you sketch a feature, such as an Extrude. When you
created the sketch, the single line entity in the sketch extrudes to form a surface that
has an edge that lies on the sketching plane, and an edge that is projected to the
depth location.

Both edges of this surface rely on the single sketched entity. If we add a round to
one of the edges of this extruded feature, then that round now relies on that sketched
entity (by way of the extrude feature).

If we were to go into the sketch again after we created the round, and deleted the
entity that eventually made up the edge, then the round would fail. We can use the
replace command to sketch a new entity and make the downstream features use it
instead of the original one.

To do this, you would sketch a new entity. Once the entity has been sketched, you
would select it so it becomes highlighted in red. Then you would use Edit, Replace.
You will then pick the old entity that the new one replaces. You will probably be
prompted to delete dimensions that were applied to the old entity. Re-dimension the
new entity as needed, then finish out of the sketch. The features downstream should
regenerate successfully.

The following figure shows the original sketch, extrude feature, and round for this
example.
Now, suppose we want to make the following change.

When we go back into the original sketch, if we simply pick on the edge and hit the
Delete key, we get the following warning in the message window.

This is letting us know that if we delete this entity, other features downstream will fail.
We will click on No to the right of the message window to cancel the deletion of this
entity.

Therefore, we will sketch the new arc that will soon replace the edge, as shown
below.

The old edge is still in the sketch, because we can’t delete it just yet. Once we have
the new arc sketched, we will click on it to highlight it in red, then go to Edit,
Replace. We are prompted in the message window to select the old entity to
replace. We will pick on the vertical edge. When we do, we get the following
window.

You may or may not get this window, depending on how your sketch is dimensioned.
If you are prompted with this window, do not worry. Click on Yes to delete any
necessary dimensions, and then re-apply the necessary dimensions to the new arc.
 Once you are done, you r final sketch, extrude and round feature will look like the
figure at the top of the next page.

We can clearly see that the Extrude and Round features are able to use this new
arc. If we had deleted the edge and sketched the arc in its place, the round would
certainly have failed. The extrude would not have failed, because it will successfully
use any regenerated, closed sketch, and because the sketch was for this feature.

RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON

You will also find that most of the common functionality in Sketcher can be carried
out using the right mouse button. Lines, arcs, circles, rectangles, as well as
dimension and modify are a few of the items that show up on the screen when you
click on the right mouse button. If you have an entity selected, you may get
additional menu items. Feel free to use the right mouse button for easy and fast
switching between common tools and functions.

LESSON SUMMARY
Many of the features in Pro/ENGINEER require a sketch of some sort. This lesson
went into great detail to cover most aspects of sketching and sketch mode.

Remember to always sketch in the following order:

• Select References
• Sketch Quickly but Accurately
• Constrain Entities
• Dimension
• Modify Dimensions
• Accept Sketch

Make use of symmetry whenever possible and mirror your sketch to save time.

You can use the menus at the top, the icons in the sketcher toolbar or the right
mouse button to access common sketcher commands and tools.

EXERCISES
Create the sketches shown on the following pages as stand-alone sketches. Be sure
to follow the proper sketcher steps (with the exception of the “Select References” for
these exercises. Save each sketch once you are complete before Accepting them.

Sketch 1 – Shear_Plate.sec
Sketch 2 – Latch_Plate.sec
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Sketch Feature. We
will also learn how to start a new part.
USAGE
The Sketch feature is used to create a curve on a 2D plane or planar surface. This
curve can then be used to create a variety of different features.

STARTING A NEW PART

Up to now, we have not created a part file yet. We will now create one before we can
create our sketch feature. To start a new part, click on File, New, or click on the
following icon.

In the New window, make sure Part is selected in the first column, and Solid is
selected in the sub-type column. Enter a name for the part in the field at the bottom.
The window looks like the following.

Click on OK to complete this window. A new window appears as shown below.

In the upper portion, we want to make sure the appropriate start part is selected in
blue. In this example, we will show the Startpart_English start part. You can enter
parameter values in the spaces provided at the bottom and then click on OK to
continue.

The part will open in your working window. By default, datum planes should be
visible, so the model looks like the following.

The model tree will appear in the Navigator, showing all of the existing geometry.
 We can see that there are three datum planes, one datum coordinate system, and
three datum axes in every part created from the start part. This is intentional. We
will learn more about datum features in upcoming lessons. Depending on the
organization, you may have different start parts with different start part geometry.

CREATING A SKETCH FEATURE

On the Feature Toolbar, you will find a fly-out icon that represents datum features.
Fully expanded, it will look like the following.

As indicated in the above figure, the Sketch feature is the icon that appears as a blue
squiggly line on a dotted grid. When you pick on this feature, you are prompted to
pick your sketching plane. The next section will describe the dialog box for selecting
sketching planes.

SELECTING SKETCHING PLANES

For any feature where a sketch is required, you are prompted to select a sketching
plane. In the Sketch feature, when prompted to pick a sketching plane, we will see
the following dialog box.

In Wildfire 2.0, dialog boxes that contain more than one field will indicate the active
field by filling it yellow. In the figure above, the field used to select the sketching
plane is currently filled in yellow.

A field that is white (Reference in this case) is an available field to select but is not
the currently active field. To activate a “Non-Active” field, simply click once in the
field with the left mouse button. Any field that is grayed out is currently “In-Active”
until enough references are picked to make that filed active.

Therefore, we would start by picking on the sketching plane. In this example, we use
the TOP datum plane.
Once we select this, we may see another datum plane or planar surface on the
model get selected automatically as the horizontal/vertical reference, and its
orientation will be selected as well. This is a good thing from a time saving
standpoint, but you will want to be aware which entity is selected, and how it is
facing. NOTE: There are times when it won’t automatically assume an H/V
reference.

In this example, when we pick on the TOP datum plane, it automatically assumes we
want to face the RIGHT datum plane towards the Right. Our window shows this in
the next figure.

To change the reference entity, you can simply pick a new one on the model,
because it is currently the active field. Be sure to note the orientation, as you may
need to change it for the new reference. For example, if we wanted to face the
FRONT datum plane towards the Bottom, we would need to first select the plane,
and then change the orientation to “Bottom” in this window.

In Wildfire 2.0, the arrow is always the viewing direction in this dialog box. To change
this, click on the Flip button. On the model, we can see which entities have been
selected based on the color.

The sketching plane will always highlight in an orange color. The horizontal / vertical
reference will always highlight in red, and the direction arrow will always be yellow.
The following figure shows this.

As mentioned before, the sketch feature looks like a datum curve, but is a slightly
lighter shade of blue to make it stand apart. The following figure shows the
difference between a sketch feature and a datum curve (through points – which are
currently not shown).
 Printed out in black and white, you may not see the subtle difference, but it is there.

LESSON SUMMARY
A Sketch Feature creates a 2D curve. It can be selected directly to create certain
solid features. We will see this in the next lesson.

EXERCISES

Create a brand new part called Plate_Layout. On the TOP datum plane, create the
following sketch feature.

When finished, your sketch feature should look like the following from a TOP
orientation.
Save and close this part. We will come back to it in the next lesson.
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the extrude feature, and
the different depth options available.
EXTRUDE DEFINITION
An Extrude is created by taking a sketch and pulling that sketch in a straight
direction to a specified depth. The following figure illustrates this concept.

Within the extrude feature, you can create solid protrusions, thin protrusions, solid
cuts, thin cuts or surfaces, and can switch back and forth between these. The
following figure shows these different types of entities.
 We will see these entity types in many of the common features in Pro/ENGINEER.
There are two different ways to approach an extrude feature. The first approach
assumes you have no sketch features in your model that you will use as the basis for
the extrude. The second assumes you are going to use a sketch feature already in
your model.

EXTRUDE STEPS
The steps to create an extrude feature are as follows:

1. Use Insert, Extrude from the Menu Bar, or select on the icon in the
Feature Toolbar.

2. Select one of the feature types: Solid ( ), Surface ( ), Cut ( ),

and/or Thin ( ).
3. If no sketch feature was selected, hold down the Right Mouse Button, and
select Define Internal Sketch.
4. Select a sketching plane, horizontal/vertical reference and orientation in the
Sketch dialog box.
5. Sketch the profile to be extruded, followed by the blue check mark in
sketcher mode.
6. Select depth option and enter depth value (if blind).
7. Accept the feature.

If you are starting off with an existing sketch feature as the basis for the extrude
feature, the steps are as follows:
 1. Select the Sketch Feature (either in the working window, or in the model
tree).

2. Use Insert, Extrude from the Menu Bar, or select on the icon in the
Feature Toolbar.

3. Select one of the feature types: Solid ( ), Surface ( ), Cut ( ),

and/or Thin ( ).
4. Select the depth option and enter depth value (if blind).
5. Accept the feature.

EXAMPLE 1 – Internal Sketch

In this example, we will assume that we do not have a sketch feature to pick on to
create the extrude feature. To begin, create a new part called Safety_Key. We will
use the Startpart_English as the template for this part since our dimensions will be
in inches.

We will start off with a protrusion (Solid Extrude) feature. Therefore, click on the

extrude icon ( ), or use Insert, Extrude from the Menu Bar. Down in the lower
left corner of our interface, the dashboard for the Extrude feature will open up. It
looks like the following figure.

Along the bottom row of this dashboard are the different feature types, depth and
direction options. Along the top of this dashboard are feature-specific menu options.
These menu options are referred to as “Slide-Up Panels”, because they open up into
little panels of information when you click on them.

By default, the solid option is selected for the Extrude feature. Since this is the first
solid feature in the entire model, the Cut option is currently not available.

We will leave the default of Solid selected, and now it is time to create the sketch for
our first extrude feature. We will therefore hold the Right Mouse Button down over
the working window, and select Define Internal Sketch, as shown in the next figure.
This will bring up the Sketch window, as we can see in the next figure.

We will select the TOP datum plane as our sketching plane, and accept the default
select of the RIGHT datum plane facing towards the Right. Click on the Sketch
button to enter into the sketch.

In sketch mode, sketch a horizontal centerline on the existing horizontal reference

line. Then, sketch a 1.12” x 2.4” rectangle to the right of the vertical reference line,
symmetric about the centerline, as shown below.
When you click on the blue check mark to complete this sketch, go to a default
orientation to see the dynamic preview better.

If we look at the dynamic preview of our extrude feature we can see the following.

For the extrude feature, you will see a yellow outline of the feature being created.
There is a yellow arrow that indicates the direction the feature is going. If you simply
click on this arrow, you can flip it to the other direction.

There is also a depth dimension (for blind extruded features). At the end of the
dimension, there is a white square. This is a drag handle. You can use your left
mouse button and drag the depth value dynamically.

To change the depth value, you can either enter the value in the depth field in the
dashboard, or double-click on the yellow dimension on your model. We will enter the
depth of 1.9, as shown in the previous figure.

The lower right side of our working window is also associated with the dashboard,
and has the following icons.
I recommend always leaving the Dynamic Preview On (Checked). We will talk about
the pause feature a little later – but for now, understand that it is associated with “On-
The-Fly” Datum creation.

You can use the full preview (eyeglasses) to see what the final model would look like
when the feature is done. We are going to click on the Accept Feature icon to
complete this first protrusion. Our model looks like the following.

Now, we will create another extrude feature that will remove material from this block.
Start by selecting the extrude icon again. This time, however, we want to make sure
that we select the Cut icon in the dashboard, as shown below.

NOTE: When you select the Cut option, another icon appears at the end of the
dashboard that allows you to specify which side of the sketch the material is being
removed from, as we can see in the previous figure.

Once we have selected Solid (by default) and Cut, we will use the Right Mouse
Button to select Define Internal Sketch. We want to use the same sketching plane
that we did before (TOP datum plane). Instead of selecting it again, we will click on
the Use Previous button in the Sketch window. This will automatically select the last
sketching plane, H/V reference, and orientation that was used for the previous
feature.

Click on Sketch to get into sketch mode, and sketch the following 1.4” x .5”
rectangle.
Once you sketch the rectangle, click on the blue check mark to complete the sketch,
and then go to a default view to see the dynamic preview better.

From the previous figure, we can see that our cut is going in the wrong direction. We
can also see an additional arrow. One of the yellow arrows indicates the direction the
feature is going, while the other one shows up for cuts to represent the side of the
sketch from which the material is being removed.

In this case, we will click on the arrow to flip the direction of feature creation and then
we need to change our depth option.

In the Dashboard, we will click on the arrow to see the different depth options, as
shown in the next figure.
Currently, we have the Blind depth option selected. We want to use the Through
All depth option. NOTE: We could have flipped the direction of feature creation by
clicking on the icon to the right of the depth value, as indicated in the figure above.

Once you select the Through All depth option, the depth value should gray out, and
our dynamic preview will extend beyond the top of the part to indicate that it is going
all the way through the model, as shown in the next figure.

The depth dimension and drag handle have also disappeared from the preview, since
we can not change the depth value with the “Through All” option. Now, we can click
on the green check mark icon to accept this cut feature. The model now looks like
the following.
 The model tree will only indicate Extrude features with an incremental number.

The biggest reason it only says “Extrude #” is the fact that we could change the cut to
a protrusion or a surface, etc. at a later time, and therefore, the “Extrude” name is
generic enough to allow for this flexibility.

Save and close this model – we will return to complete it in the exercise.

EXAMPLE 2 – EXTERNAL SKETCH

In this example, we will see how to use a sketch feature to create an extrude feature.
To demonstrate this, we will start by opening up the Plate_Layout part that we
created in Lesson 5.

If you recall – this part consists of a single sketch feature, and it looks like the
following from a TOP view with the datum planes turned off.

We will start by selecting the sketch feature (either by picking it in the Working
Window, or in the Model Tree). Next, we will pick on the extrude icon.

Right away, we will notice a dynamic preview of the feature when we are placed into
the extrude feature, as shown below.

We will change the depth value to 2.0 and then click on the green check mark. Our
model looks like the following.
IMPORTANT: When you select on a sketch feature, the entire sketch is used. In this
case we created a plate with four holes in it. Even if we were to select only portions
of this sketch feature (as we learned in Lesson 3), it still uses the entire sketch.
Therefore, if we had wanted to have a plate with four cylindrical feet sticking out (or if
we had wanted the holes to be blind instead of through all) we would have to make
the holes as a separate sketch feature, or we could create regular extrude features
with internal sketches and use the “Use Edge” command to pick only the pieces from
the sketch that we wanted.

When we use a sketch feature to create a solid feature, it becomes hidden in the
model tree, as shown in the next figure.

A hidden feature in the model tree has a shaded block around its icon, as shown
above. We can unhide this feature and continue to use it for more features if we
needed to. The Extrude feature is completely associative with the sketch feature. If
we make a change to the sketch, it updates the extrude.

There is an option in Extrude mode when we use an external sketch to break that
associativity. In the dashboard, we would pick on the Placement slide-up panel, and
click on the Unlink button, as shown below.

When you click on the Unlink button, you will get the following prompt.
 Click on OK to finish the unlink. In the slide-up panel, we can now see an Edit button
that replaces the “Unlink” button, as shown below.

When you click on Edit you are brought into the standard Sketch window to redefine
the placement and sketch of this feature. It will automatically take on the sketching
plane, H/V reference and orientation of the original sketch feature (in this case the
TOP datum plane as the sketching plane, and the RIGHT plane facing towards the
Right).

If we make a change to the original sketch feature after the Unlink, we will not see the
extrude feature update.

DEPTH OPTIONS
There are six depth options that are available at different times when creating
extruded features. These are:

• Blind – Extrudes a section from the sketching plane by the specified

depth value. Specifying a negative depth value flips the depth direction.

• Symmetric – Extrudes a section on each side of the sketching plane

by half of the specified depth value. Negative values are not allowed.

• Through Next – Extrudes a section to the next surface. Use this

option to terminate a feature at the first surface the entire sketch profile
reaches. You cannot use datum planes as terminating surfaces.

• Through All – Extrudes a section to intersect with all surfaces. Use

this option to terminate a feature at the last surface it reaches.

• Through Until – Extrudes a section to intersect with a selected surface

or plane. You can use any part surface, datum plane, quilt composed of
several surfaces or another component in an assembly.
• To Selected – Extrudes a section to a selected point, curve, plane or
surface.

The following figure illustrates these depth option.

EXTRUDED SURFACE
You go about creating the extrude feature the same way you have so far. When you
get into the dashboard, you will select on the Surface option.

When you create your sketch, you can have an open section or a closed section.
The following figures show the difference between an open section and a closed, and
their resulting extruded surface features.

Open Section
 Closed Section

SLIDE-UP PANELS

Within the dashboard, we have some menus. These are called Slide-Up Panels,
because, when you pick on the menu, a panel slides up to show the contents of that
menu command. In the case of the extrude feature, there are three slide-up panels.
These are: Placement, Options and Properties.

The Placement slide-up panel is used to define the sketch. We can see this in the
figure below.

Instead of clicking on the Define button, we can also right-click out in the working
window and select Define Internal Sketch.

The Options slide-up panel is used to define additional depth options, and behavior
as the depth is applied. We can see this in the following figure.

For a Blind depth, we have the ability to control the depth differently on either side of
the sketching plane. For example, we could have the depth go through all in one
direction, and up to surface in another.
The other option on this panel – Capped Ends – will be discussed shortly.

The third panel, entitled Properties, is used to rename the feature. The current
name is shown below.

We can see that this feature will be called EXTRUDE_1. This is the name that
appears in the model tree once we create the feature. We can edit it here to give it a
meaningful name.

The little blue “I” next to the name field brings up an information window in the built-in
web browser with information about this feature that we are creating (sort of a
summary). It looks like the figure at the top of the next page.

CAPPED ENDS

When we create a surface that has a closed section, we can cap off the starting and
ending surfaces of the feature. In the case of an extruded surface, this creates a
surface on the sketching plane and at the end of the depth that have the profile of the
sketch. The following figures show this last surface that we defined with the capped
ends in a no hidden and shaded mode.
 In shaded mode, the capped surface looks exactly like a solid protrusion, but in no-
hidden mode, we can clearly see the purple and pink edges of the surface.

THIN OPTION
For either a solid or a cut, we can select the Thin option. This adds a thickness to
the sketch when extruding. The thickness can be added to one side of the sketch or
the other, or it can be added equally to both sides.

When we create the thin feature, we use the same methods that we have for the
other extruded features. In the dashboard, we will select our main feature type (Solid
or Cut), then pick on the Thin option icon. This will bring up another field to enter the
thickness, and another arrow icon to define the side of the sketch the thickness will
be added to.

The following figure shows the dashboard for a thin protrusion.

The dynamic preview shows us the thickness applied to the feature, as shown in the
following figure.
 Use the arrow icon at the right end of the dashboard to see the different ways it
applies the thickness (inside, outside, or equal about sketch). Once you have what
you are looking for, accept the feature. It will look like the following.

LESSON SUMMARY
An extrude feature takes a sketched profile and adds depth in a single direction. You
can create a Solid or Thin Protrusion, a Solid or Thin Cut, or a Surface in a single
extrude command.

Be sure to check the reference plane and its orientation once you select a sketching
plane. You don’t want any surprises in case it decides to pick a surface or orientation
you weren’t expecting.

Use capped ends to close off the ends of a surface extrude, but only if you sketched
a closed section.

EXERCISES
Using the extrude feature, create the following parts on the pages that follow. Be
sure to use a start part for each separate part, and save your models when you are
done.

Plate_Layout2.prt
Open up the Plate_Layout2 part. In this exercise, you will do the following:

Create two extrude features – one for the rectangular plate, and one for the holes.
The rectangular plate is extruded to a depth of 2.0 inches. The holes are only going
to be extruded 1 inch into the plate – making them blind holes.

Use external sketches already in the model to create this part. The following figure
shows the resulting model.

Save and close this model.

Safety Key – Finish this model that we already started in this lesson.
Rod_Support
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Edit, Edit Definition and
Edit References.
EDIT
The Edit command is only used to make a dimensional value change. For example,
if we want to modify a dimension from 1” to 2”, we would use Edit. If we needed to
change the location where the dimension is going to, we would have to use Edit
Definition or Edit References.

To edit the dimensions of a particular feature, select on that feature (either in the
model tree or on the model itself), and then hold down the right mouse button, and
select Edit, or just double-click on that feature in the working window.

The dimensions appear on the part, and you can now double-click on them to change
their value. Once the dimension has been modified, it turns green, as shown in the
following figure for the hole diameter in our Plate_Layout2.prt model.
 To regenerate the model, click on Edit, Regenerate from the Menu Bar, or click on

the Regenerate icon ( ) in the System Toolbar.

EDIT DEFINITION
The Edit Definition command is used to change anything about the feature, such as
the depth value or option, dimensional changes, references used, the feature type
(solid to surface, for example), etc.

To use Edit Definition, first select the feature on the model or in the model tree, hold
down the right mouse button, and then select Edit Definition. This brings up the
dashboard that we saw at the time we created the feature.

EDIT REFERENCES
The Edit References command is used to reroute features to different references,
such as the sketching plane, horizontal and vertical references, or any sketcher
references. You can not modify dimension values, or change depth options or the
sketch itself using this command.

To use Edit References, first select the feature on the model or in the model tree,
hold down the right mouse button, and then select Edit References. The following
menu appears:

Reroute Feat

This option is used to re-select references for the existing feature. This is the most
commonly used command for Edit References.

Replace Ref

This option allows us to specifically pick on certain references of the feature to

replace with different references.

In the message bar, we are prompted whether we want to roll back the model to the
time in which the feature was created or not.

This is a personal decision. I personally think it is a good idea, because if the change
causes a failure, you will not be hit with all of the failure windows. Instead, you can
now resume features selectively, and address each failure one-by-one.

Once you have made the decision to roll back the model or not, each reference used
to create the feature will highlight one-by-one on the working window, and you will be
prompted in a menu whether to keep the same reference, or select a new one. The
following figure shows this menu.
 The default action is to pick a new reference (Alternate). If we wanted to keep the
same reference that is shown on the screen, and go onto the next reference, you
would select Same Ref.

Had we picked Replace Ref, we would see the following menu.

LESSON SUMMARY
Use Edit to make dimensional changes only. Use Edit References to change the
different references used to define the feature only. Use Edit Definition to change
anything about the feature.

EXERCISES
Plate_Layout2.prt

Open up the Plate_Layout2 part that we changed in Lesson 6. We are going to

change the blind holes to be feet that stick out of the bottom of the plate at 0.5”. Use
the appropriate Edit command to accomplish this task.

The final part should look like the following (from the bottom).
Save and close this part.
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Datum Planes, Datum
Axes, Datum Points, and Datum Coordinate Systems.
DATUMS – WHAT ARE THEY?
Datum features are widely used in the creation of other features. They are
lightweight, don’t affect mass properties, can be hidden when you don’t want to see
them, and very powerful in providing necessary ties and references for other
features.

The most common datum feature types are accessed in the feature toolbar by
selecting the very top icon in this toolbar. When we select this icon, we see the
following datum feature types.

DATUM PLANES
When we create a new part or assembly, we see datum planes already built into the
model, as shown for a part file below.
As indicated in the figure above, datum planes have two sides, a positive side and a
negative side. The positive side (if you are using the default system colors), is
brown. The negative side is black (or actually, a very dark gray – but we’ll consider it
black for this training guide). When we are in a default orientation, we can see the
positive sides for all three default datum planes. If we rotate the model slightly to see
the back side of the FRONT plane, then we can see the negative side, as seen in the
figure at the top of the next page.

To turn on/off the display of datum planes, click on the icon in the system
toolbar.

The positive side of the datum plane is the one that is used when picking orientation
references. For example, if we pick on the TOP plane as a sketching plane, we know
we will be looking at the TOP plane in the sketch. If we pick the FRONT plane as a
sketcher reference, and pick Bottom as the orientation, then the brown side of the
FRONT plane will face towards the bottom of the screen in sketch mode.

Datum planes are widely used for sketch planes, sketch reference planes, sketcher
references, depth references, cross-section planes, etc. They are probably the most
used datum feature in Pro/ENGINEER.

To demonstrate the creation method, we will create the following part.

Before we do this, however, we will change a setting that will allow us to see datum
planes when we spin the model. Typically, datum planes temporarily turn off until
you stop spinning, panning or zooming.

To change this setting, go to View, Display Settings, Model Display. This will bring
up the following window.

In the middle of this window is a section entitled “Display While Reorienting”. The
only items that are checked by default are Surface Mesh and Orientation Center.
We want to check Datums, so datum features become visible when we spin.
Now, we will create this part, and call it Dtm_Planes. We will create the part using a
start part so we have our default datum planes, as we can see below.

The first feature that we will create is the semi-circular extruded protrusion that forms
the main shape of this part. We will use the RIGHT datum plane as a sketching
plane and pick the TOP plane to face towards the Top as the sketching reference.
Our sketch will look like the following.

The display of datum planes was turned off in the previous figure to see the sketch
easier. Once we are done the sketch, we want to extrude to a depth of 10.000
inches. Our first feature looks like the following.

Be sure your RIGHT datum plane is at the left side of the model. If not, edit the
definition, and change the direction of feature creation by clicking on the yellow arrow
in the dynamic preview.

Our next feature will be a datum plane that is offset the RIGHT plane by an amount of
4.00 inches. Therefore, we will pick on the datum plane icon in the datum flyout
icon. This will bring up the following window.
The first tab, entitled Placement is active. We are asked to pick references to define
the plane. The datum plane creation tool is pretty smart. Depending on the type of
reference we pick, it will assume the most logical choice for creation.

Therefore, if we pick on the RIGHT datum plane, we should see the preview of a
plane that is parallel and slightly offset from the RIGHT plane. Drag the white square
out towards the right, and you will see it moves the preview of plane, as shown
below.

In the Datum Plane window, we see the following.

The RIGHT datum plane is listed in the References field, and to the far right is the
type of creation method it assumed, which is Offset in this case. Down in the
bottom, we can see the offset value, which shows in this figure as 3.500. We will
change the value to 4.000 (either here in this window, or on the model).
The second tab in this window is entitled Display, and if we click on it, the window
will look like the following.

You can use this tab to change the positive side of the plane. In this window, it is
called the Normal Direction, and there is a Flip button next to it. There is also an
option to Adjust Outline, which allows you to resize the datum plane. By default, it
assumes the size of the model. I recommend you let it resize itself.

The third tab is entitled Properties, and looks like the following.

This tab is used to rename the datum plane, or get information about it. We are
going to go ahead and click on OK to finish creating this offset datum plane. Our
model should now look like the following.

Now that we have this datum plane, we can create our first extruded cut feature. We
will use the new datum plane (DTM1) as the sketching plane, and face the TOP
plane towards the top again as the sketcher reference. Our sketch will look like the
following.
Extrude this cut to the right of the datum plane a distance of 5.00 inches. The model
will now look like the following.

Our next datum plane will be another offset plane, a distance of 3.5 inches up from
the TOP plane. Click on the datum plane tool, then select on the TOP plane. It
should automatically assume an offset creation type.

Make sure it is going above the TOP plane, and change the distance to 3.5. Our
datum plane will look like the following once we create it.

Use this new datum plane (DTM2) as a sketching plane for our next extruded
protrusion feature. Pick the RIGHT datum plane to face towards the right. Create
the following sketch (with datum planes turned off for easier viewing).
Once we accept this sketch, go back to a default view. The feature is probably trying
to extrude up from this plane. If so, click on the yellow arrow to flip the direction so

the feature is going down. Then, change your depth option to Through Next (
). When you accept this feature, your model will look like the following.

Our final feature will be the cut that is angled. We could create this cut by extruding
symmetrically about the FRONT datum plane, but then we wouldn’t learn another
method for creating datum planes.

Therefore, we will create a new datum plane. This time, we are going to use two
references to create the plane, an edge to go Through, and a surface to measure an
Angle from. Therefore, pick on the datum plane tool. First, pick the TOP datum
plane. It will initially assume an offset, as we can see from the datum plane window.
To add additional references, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, and select
them. To get an angled plane, we need a reference that acts as an axis of rotation.
Therefore, we will also select the following edge (using the Ctrl key).

Once we select the edge, we see the Datum Plane window update to show the new
creation type applied.

We can see the “Through” condition, and a rotation angle in the bottom. You will
want to look at your model to see how the angle is being measured. Often times, the
order you pick the references, as well as the references themselves determine how
the angle is measured. Since we picked the TOP datum plane (whose positive side
is pointing upwards), and an edge, the angle is measured from the brown side of the
datum plane. Therefore, we can enter a value of 20 in the rotation field.

The dynamic preview of the plane will look like the following.
We will click on OK from the datum plane menu to finish off the plane. The model will
look like the following now.

Now that we have this plane, we can create our cut. Use the top surface of the first
cut as the sketching plane, and face the left side surface towards the bottom. The
figure below shows the references we are picking.

In our sketch, we want to take advantage of symmetry, and put in a vertical centerline
on the vertical sketcher reference. When we sketch our rectangle, we will make sure
to look for the little arrow symbols that show it is symmetric about this centerline. Our
sketch should look like the following.
Once we are done sketching, go to a default view to see the dynamic preview. We
want to make sure the direction is going down, then change our depth option to To
Selected ( ), and pick the angled datum plane that we just created. The
dynamic preview (in No Hidden model), will look like the following.

It may not look like it is going to angle down, but if we were to click on the Full
Preview icon (the eyeglasses) or accept the feature, we would see that it does stop
at the datum plane, as shown in the final model image below.
 You can also create datum planes using other references. The following describes
the most common methods and references for creating datum planes:
• Through – Create a datum plane to be co-planar with another datum plane
or planar surface. Pick on a Datum Plane or Planar Surface as the only
reference. When window shows offset, change the value in the window to
“Through”, as shown below. Another set of references would be an edge
that lies in a single plane, but has at least two directions to it, such as the
edge of a cylinder.
• Offset – Create a datum plane offset an existing plane or planar surface.
Pick on a plane or planar surface as the only reference. The default type
should be “Offset” in the window. Enter the offset value.
• At Angle – Create a datum plane through an edge or axis and at an angle to
another plane or planar surface. Pick on a plane or planar surface for one
reference and an edge or datum axis for the other reference. Enter the
angle.
• Parallel – Create a datum plane parallel to another plane or planar surface
through some selected reference. Pick a plane or planar surface as one
reference to determine parallelism, then pick on a datum point, vertex, edge,
axis or coordinate system as the second reference to determine the location.
• Through Points – Create a datum plane through three datum points or
vertices. Pick on three points or vertices or a combination to determine
plane.

DATUM POINTS
Datum points are most commonly used for creating other datum entities, such as an
axis, plane or curve. Datum points can also be used as sketcher references or for
assembling two components into an assembly.

To turn on/off the display of datum points and their tags (names), click on the
following icons in the system toolbar.

The left icon is used for turning on/off the point completely. The icon on the right is
only used to turn on/off the point names (tags).

We will open the model Dtm_Pac for an example, and we will show all of the most
common methods for creating datum points. To create a datum point, click on the
datum point icon in the datum flyout icons. We will see the following window.
We can create as many different points as we want in a single datum point feature.
This is different from the datum plane tool where we could only create one plane at a
time. For each point that you create, you select references.

The Properties tab is used to rename the entire datum point feature (not each
individual point created).

ON SURFACE

This is a datum point that lies on a selected surface, and its location is measured
from two references. To create this, click on the datum point tool, and then pick
anywhere on a surface (planar or otherwise). The following figure shows a sample
surface pick to place a point, and the Datum Point window when you select on the
surface.

The point shows up on the surface along with three white squares. The square next
to the point name (PNT0, in this case), is used to show the location of the point. You
can drag this square to locate the point on the surface.

The other two white squares are used to tie to references to locate the point. We will
start by dragging the right-most square until it comes to the side surface and snaps
there. The model and window will look like the following once we let go of the
mouse.
We can see the white square has gone away, and is replaced by a filled dot. This dot
shows us that we are lying on that surface edge. The window also reflects this by
listing the first Offset Refrence in the field at the bottom of the window.

We will drag the other white square over to the front surface, as shown below.

This white square should also be replaced by a filled dot, and the other offset
dimension and reference shows up in the window. We would now edit the values of
these offset dimensions. To create a new point, we would click on the New Point
item in the left column of the window. To complete this datum point feature, click on
OK.

The completed point looks like the figure at the top of the next page.
OFFSET SURFACE

This is a datum point that lies offset a surface by a specified amount, and located
from two references. The creation method is very similar to an “On Surface” with the
addition of an offset distance and direction.

The following figure shows a sample surface pick, and the resulting window.

Just like the “On Surface” point, this starts out the exact way. It even assumes the
“On Surface” constraint type. To change this, click where you see the word On, and
change it to Offset, as shown below.
A third dimension appears on the model, and a field for the Offset has become active
in the window. We will drag the locating squares to the same surfaces that we did
before, then enter the offset value as 1.5, and change the locating dimension to those
shown in the following figure.

When we see the point as we intended, we click on OK to finish the datum point
feature, or click on New Point to create additional points. The final point looks like
the following.

ON VERTEX

This is a datum point that lies on the end of an edge or edge segment. You create
this by clicking on the datum point tool, then pick on any vertex in the model. The
following figure shows the pick and the window that result.
If we click on OK now, we would have a datum point at this corner vertex. Instead,
we will continue with this same window to show the next type.

OFFSET VERTEX

From the last figure, we had picked a vertex to place the point, and the window
indicated a constraint of On, which placed our datum point exactly on the selected
vertex. If we change the type from On to Offset, then we must pick another entity
that defines the offset direction.

We will hold down the Ctrl key and select the edge just below the highlighted vertex,
we see the following.

We can enter an offset distance of 1.5, as shown above. The constraint of Parallel
applied to this selected edge means that the point will offset from the vertex parallel
to the direction of the edge.

Now, let’s try a different offset reference. First, right mouse click over the word
Parallel and select Remove, as shown below.
Now, we’ll hold down the Ctrl key and select the DEF_CS coordinate system from
the model tree. We see the following in the window and on the model.

Next to the Offset field, we can see another pull-down that currently indicates “X”.
This is letting us select which axis of the coordinate system is driving our offset
direction. We can change this to “Z” as shown in the following figure.

We will now remove this reference the same way we removed the edge. Once it is
removed, we will hold down the Ctrl key again, and this time select the top surface.
We will see the following.
Now, the reference becomes a surface and the offset direction is normal to the
surface. As we have demonstrated, you have the ability to select a wide array of
references to determine the offset direction.

ON CURVE

Another common point creation is to locate the point on a datum curve or existing
edge. We will demonstrate this by selecting the top, front edge of the model. Our
model and window will look like the following.

When you select a curve or edge as the reference, you get a variety of options to
further refine your point definition. The first is to determine whether the distance is a
ratio or a real value. The ratio option represents the percentage along the edge or
curve where the point resides. For example, if you wanted the point to be at the
exact midpoint of the edge, you would enter a ratio of 0.5.

Real represents the actual distance along the curve the point resides at. For
example, suppose you want the point to be exactly 1.5 inches in from the back left
surface. You would change the Ratio option to Real as shown in the following figure.

Then, you would enter a value of 1.5 in the offset field.

Once you have determined how the dimension value is being measured, you can
pick your reference that the dimension value is coming from. In this window, we can
see that the dimension is being measured from the End of Curve. If you want the
opposite end to be used, click on the Next End button.
Or, if you want to use a datum plane or other reference other than one of the
endpoints, select the Reference option, then select the actual reference on the
model. Using the Reference option means that you are using a Real dimension
value instead of a ratio.

AT CENTER

This creates a datum point at the center of a circular edge, such as the edge of a
cylinder or a hole. To create, click on the datum point tool, then select on the circular
edge. Initially, it will assume an “On Curve” constraint, as shown in the following
figure.

As the figure above illustrates, we want to change the On value to Center. This will
remove all other options, and place a point at the center of this circular edge, as
shown below.

SKETCHED

The previous points were created using the datum point icon in the feature toolbar.
This is the first of the point definitions that can only be accessed through the menu
bar. Go to Insert, Model Datum, Point, Sketched. This will bring up the Sketch
window to select a sketching plane and a sketching reference. We will pick the top
flat surface as a sketching plane, and then select the front surface to face towards
the bottom.

Inside our sketch, we will use the sketcher point icon ( ) and pick the location on
the surface for the points. Dimension the points in whatever style you need.

The figure at the top of the next page shows a sample sketch for these points.
Accept the sketch once you are done, and your datum points will appear on the
model, as shown in the next figure.

OFFSET COORDINATE SYSTEM

The next type of non-standard datum point creation method allows you to create
multiple datum points by offsetting a coordinate system. Use Insert, Model Datum,
Point, Offset Coordinate System. This brings up the following window.
The first thing you are asked to pick is the coordinate system you are going to use.
We will pick the default coordinate system DEF_CS from the model tree. Then, pick
in the first row to start defining points. The window will now look like the following.

You can type in the X, Y, and Z values directly in this window. The following shows
how the point moves on the model once you edit the dimension values.

You can also drag the point around the model by placing your mouse over the white
square until you see the axis highlight that you are changing.

The figure at the top of the next page shows how the “Z” axis becomes visible just
before you drag it.
To create another point, click in the next row in the main portion of the window. This
will now look like the following.

At the bottom of this window, there are three other options. The first is used to import
in a point file (has a PTS extension). The second button allows you to create a point
file. If we click on this, we can save a file to our working directory. Opening the file in
notepad, it looks like the following.
 As you can see, this is a simple file to create and edit. You only need to enter X, Y,
and Z values in this file.

The third button is used to remove all dimensional information from the point array.
You might want to do this if you know you are not going to change these points, and
you want to potentially speed up a very large point array.

DATUM AXES
Datum axes are used to create other datum features, such as planes, and they are
also very useful in assembly mode to align components, set up pin constraints, etc.

To show datum axes, click on the following icon in your system toolbar.

To create a datum axis, click on the datum axis icon in the datum flyout toolbar. This
brings up the following window.

THROUGH EDGE

One way to create datum axes is through an existing straight edge. To create this,
pick on the edge as a reference, as shown below.
The datum axes will be created through this edge.

NORMAL TO SURFACE

If you select just a surface as a reference, you get the following window.

Just as we did with the “On Surface” datum point, drag the white squares to the
references you wish to use to locate the point on the surface, and the axis will be
created at this point, as shown below.

THROUGH POINTS/VERTICES

With this axes creation method, select any two vertices, datum points, or combination
of them to create an axis that goes through these points, as shown below.
THROUGH CYLINDER

This creates a datum axes through the center axis of a revolved surface, such as a
cylinder. By default, most cylindrical surfaces or revolved surfaces will already have
an axis, so you may not need to create this type very often.

The following window shows the model and Datum Axis window when you pick on
the cylindrical surface.

POINT NORMAL TO PLANE

With this creation type, select on a datum point, then select a planar surface that the
axis will be normal to. This creates an axis normal to the selected plane passing
through the datum point. No dimensions are necessary for this one.

INTERSECTION OF TWO SURFACES / PLANES

This is an axis that is created where surfaces or planes meet. They must intersect to
form a single straight line, otherwise the axis does not lie in a single plane, and
therefore can not be created. The following window shows the intersection of the
front surface and a datum plane.
DATUM COORDINATE SYSTEMS
You may need to create a datum coordinate system for some features. To show
coordinate systems, click on the following icon in the system toolbar.

When you click on the datum coordinate system icon in the datum flyout tool, you get
the following window.

The most common way to create a datum coordinate system is to pick three surfaces
or planes. The following shows a coordinate system window and model when three
surfaces are selected.
We can see that all three surfaces are highlighted and each has a constraint of “On”
set. We will need to go to the Orientation tab next to define the X, Y, and Z
directions. Clicking on this tab, we see the following.

The objective in this tab is to select a surface whose normal represents the
coordinate system axis. I have selected the front surface to determine the Z
direction, and then selected the side surface (still highlighted) to project the X
direction. I had to Flip the X-direction to get the result that you see above.

This same method works for selecting datum points and vertices as the original
reference.

Another method for creating datum coordinate systems is to select an axis as the
original reference. When we do this, it places one of the three axes along the axis
that we select. We must then select at least one surface that is normal to the axis as
a second reference, as shown in the following figure.

On the Orientation tab, we will select a third surface that will define the projected
axis direction. Then we can set which one is X, Y, or Z. The following figure shows
this tab, and the selected surface.
The last method for creating datum coordinate systems that we will cover is to offset
an already existing coordinate system.

Therefore we will select the DEF_CS coordinate system as our first reference. The
window will look like the following.

We can use the mouse to drag the white square, or enter values for X, Y, and Z
offsets in the fields provide. On the second tab, we can specify its orientation by
entering rotation angles in the fields, or by selecting references on the model to orient
to. I have chosen to rotate the coordinate system about the Y axis (this is the Y axis
of the DEF_CS coordinate system). The result is shown below.
LESSON SUMMARY
Datum features are very common in Pro/ENGINEER. You will get to know them very
well. Use datum planes, axes, points, and coordinate systems to aid in the creation
of other features.

EXERCISES
Create the following part files using the extrude feature. Create datum planes and/or
axes to aid in the creation of the extrude features.

Angle_Bearing
 Les
son

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Revolve Feature.
REVOLVE DEFINITION
The Revolve feature is created by revolving a sketched profile around an axis of
revolution. The angle and direction can be controlled independent of the sketch.

CREATING A REVOLVE FEATURE

The Revolve feature is very similar to the Extrude feature (Lesson 6) from the way
that it is created. The biggest differences are in the depth options (fewer for the
Revolve feature) and the sketch itself (only a half sketch with a centerline that acts as
an axis of revolution).

The steps for a revolve feature with an internal sketch are:

1. Use Insert, Revolve from the Menu Bar, or select on the icon in the
Feature Toolbar.
2. Select one of the feature types (Solid, Surface, Cut and/or Thin).
3. Hold down the right mouse button and select Define Internal Sketch.
4. Select the sketching plane, horizontal/vertical reference and orientation in
the Sketch window.
5. Sketch the profile to be revolved – making sure you only sketch half of the
feature and a centerline that acts as an axis of revolution. Click on the blue
check mark to finish the sketch.
6. Select the depth option and enter depth value (if blind).
7. Accept the feature.

When using external sketches, you either need to have a centerline defined in the
sketch that will be picked as the axis of revolution, or you need to specify a datum
axis or straight edge that lies in the plane of the sketch to act as the axis of
revolution.

The steps for a revolve feature with an external sketch are:

1. Select the Sketch Feature (either in the working window or in the model
tree).
 2. Use Insert, Revolve from the Menu Bar, or select on the icon in the
Feature Toolbar.
3. Select one of the feature types (Solid, Surface, Cut and/or Thin).
4. If a centerline was not used in the Sketch Feature, use the Placement slide-
up panel to define a datum axis or edge as the axis of revolution.
5. Select the depth option and enter depth value (if blind).
6. Accept the feature.

EXAMPLE 1 – Internal Sketch

In this example, we will create a revolve feature that uses an internal sketch. To
demonstrate this, open up the part entitled Bearing1. It contains a single sketch
feature, which we will use later.

The following figure shows this part.

We are going to create a new revolve feature by clicking on the revolve icon (
). Inside the feature, the dashboard for the revolve feature looks like the following.

As you can see, the dashboard for the revolve feature looks very similar to the
extrude dashboard. We will keep the default feature type of “Solid” and then we will
right mouse click in the working window and select Define Internal Sketch.

When the sketch window appears, click on the Use Previous button to sketch on the
same plane as the first Sketch feature. Click on Sketch from this window to proceed
into sketch mode, and sketch the following profile (don’t forget the vertical centerline
sitting on the existing vertical reference).
In the figure above, the sketch is shaped like a “P” with all straight edges and sharp
corners, and the top of the “P” is tied to the top edge of the sketch feature.

When finished with the sketch, click on the blue check mark. We will now see the
preview of the feature.

As with the extrude feature, we can see a drag handle on the angular dimension that
we can dynamically drag to see the model update. Under the depth options, we only
have the following options: Blind (specify angle), Symmetric, and Up to Selected. We
will leave the depth option at 360 degrees.

We will click on the green check mark to complete this feature. Our model currently
looks like the following.
EXAMPLE 2 – External Sketch
In this example, we will finish this bearing by cutting out the middle using the existing
sketch feature. To do this, we will first start by selecting the sketch feature from the
model tree so it highlights in read on the model. Next, click on the revolve feature
icon.

In the revolve feature, we do not see a preview yet, because we currently do not
have a centerline in the sketch feature to act as an axis of revolution. Until the
feature definition is complete, our dynamic preview will not appear, indicating to us
that we have not defined enough yet.

In our dashboard, we can see a field that is used to select the axis of revolution, as
shown in the next figure.

This field is currently highlighted in yellow. This means that we can go ahead and
select the datum axis or edge to use. If it were not highlighted in yellow, we could
pick once inside this field to make it active.
Once the field is active, we can pick on the axis or edge to use. In this case, we have
the Z_AXIS datum axis in our model tree that would work. We can also select the
inside edge of our sketch feature, since it lies in the plane of the sketch, and it lies at
the center of our model.

We will select the edge, as shown in the next figure. When we do this, the dynamic
preview appears as shown.

There is only one thing we have to do for this feature, and that is to select the Cut
icon to remove material from the model. The preview will change to show a cut
instead of a protrusion, and then we can click on the green check mark to accept this
feature.

The model now looks like the following (in hidden line mode).
LESSON SUMMARY
The revolve feature is not very different from an extrude feature in terms of the menu
picks to create it. The biggest differences lie in the rules for the sketch and the depth
options.

When sketching, be sure to create or specify an axis of revolution, and sketch on only
one side of this axis. You can also use an existing edge or axis in the model for the
axis of revolution if you do not wish to sketch one.

When specifying depth, remember that it is an angle in degrees.

EXERCISES
Create the part below using a combination of extrude and revolve features. Create
datum geometry if necessary.

Bearing2
 Lesso
n

1
0

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Datum Curves.

DATUM CURVE USAGE
Datum curves are used in a wide range of applications. They can be the trajectory
for a sweep, variable section sweep or swept blend. They can also be the boundary
edges for blended surfaces.

They are often used as tools to create or modify surfaces. We are going to learn
about a variety of methods for creating datum curves. We have already learned how
to create a sketch feature, which produces a 2D curve on a plane or planar surface.
We will now look at the other types of datum features and tools.

PROJECTED DATUM CURVES

A projected datum curve is made by projecting a sketch or existing datum curve onto
a nearby set of surfaces. You can either project normal to the sketch or normal to the
surface. We will demonstrate both of these options, and discuss what is happening
when you do this.

We will start by looking at the following part (Dtm_Curve1).

This part has a sketch feature on a datum plane (DTM1) that lies above the
cylindrical surface, as we can see above. We will use this curve to project down onto
the cylindrical surface.

From a TOP view, we can see this circular datum curve takes up most of the width of
the cylindrical surface, as shown below.

Therefore, we click on the Project Tool icon, as shown below.

When the dashboard opens, we will click on the References slide-up panel to see all
of the options, as shown in the following figure.
At the very top, there is a pull-down field. Use this field to specify whether we are
projecting an existing datum curve (Project chains), or whether we are going to
sketch (Project a Sketch). If we were to select the Project a Sketch option, our
panel would look like the following.

We can see a Define button that will allow us to go in and sketch the profile to
project. Instead, we are going to continue with the Project chains option.
Therefore, we need to select the existing edges or curves to project. We will select
the circular sketch that is already in the model.

When we select it, it becomes a bold red, as shown in the figure at the top of the next
page.
The References panel looks like the following.

In the Chains field, we can see that “1 One-by-One Chain” is listed. Now, we must
pick the surface(s) we are going to project onto. To initiate this selection, we can
either pick in the next field down in the panel, or pick in the first field in the lower
portion of the dashboard. We will select the cylindrical surface, as shown below.

Our panel now shows this surface listed in the Surfaces field, as we can see in the
next figure.
Now we come to the part where we pick to project from the sketching plane, or
whether we will project normal to a surface. Our two options are shown in the
following figure.

If we choose Along direction, then we must specify a plane or planar surface that
the normal direction is based on. If we choose Normal to surface we will not have
to specify this. We will select the “Along Direction” option and then pick the DTM1
datum plane.

The following figure shows the dynamic preview for the Along Direction with the
DTM1 plane selected as the reference.

NOTE: The arrow doesn’t seem to make a difference in this case. You could try
flipping it, but it does not change the preview.

If we accept this result, from a TOP view, this is what we would see.
The projected curve is in exact alignment with the original sketched datum curve. If
we were to select Normal to Surface, our result would be the following.

We notice that the projected curve is now more of an ellipse than a circle. Why?

The reason is simple. If we look at the following figure, we will see the answer.

When you use Along Direction, the curve is almost extruded down onto the cylindrical
surface, and the intersection of this imaginary extrusion and the surface creates the
projected curve.

When you use Normal to Surface, the surface takes control of the projection. It tries
to locate the spot on the cylindrical surface that, when projected normal to the
surface from that spot, it intersects with the original curve. We can see that, due to
the curvature of the surface, it actually starts up higher and in more to get to the
same original circular curve.
 In many cases, you may have problems getting a “Normal to Surface” projected
curve to work unless you really understand what is going on with the way it projects.
Hopefully this will help you in getting the hang of it.

THROUGH POINTS
The next type of datum curve we are going to show is the Through Points (or in
Pro/ENGINEER – it is spelled “Thru Points”). This is a curve that passes through
datum points or vertices.

We are going to work with the following part (Dtm_Curve2) for this demonstration.

To create this curve, click on the general curve icon. It brings up a set of menus
called the Menu Manager, which looks like the following.

The first option on this list is the Thru Points curve, which is the one we want. In the
menu manager, you generally pick options at the top of the menu, then select Done,
Done Sel or Done/Return at the bottom to continue.

In this case, since the Thru Points menu item is already selected (shown in a black
highlight), we will pick on Done to continue. This brings up the CURVE: Thru Points
window, which looks like the following.
This is a different feature window than the dashboard. Many of the more advanced
features still use this type of window. In the first column, entitled Elements, there is a
list of items that we can define.
The second column, entitled Info describes what is happening or what needs to
happen to the element in the first column. You can see that we are currently defining
the curve points. Below this window, we can see more menus, that look like the
following.

In the top portion, we define the way it handles corners (at the points along the
curve). If we use Spline, we get a continuous curve that is tangent along its entire
length. If we use Single Rad, then we will specify a single bend radius that it will
apply at each corner. If we select Multiple Rad, then we will be prompted to enter
the bend radius at each point we select.

In this example, we are going to stay with the default choice of Spline. In the second
set of options, we can select Single Point if we want to pick individual points, even if
they all belong to the same datum point feature. If we pick Whole Array, then we will
get all of the points in the datum point feature. Since we are only going to go
between to vertices, we won’t care what option it uses here.

Finally, we have one last section of this menu. There is only one choice at this time,
and that is to Add Points.

Down below this menu manager, we see another little window, which looks like the
figure below.
You are going to see this a lot. Every time you are prompted to select something,
this window will appear. When you are finished selecting items, you click on OK to
finish selecting. The easier thing to do, however, is to use the middle mouse button
to click once to indicate that you are finished. It is the same as clicking OK.

We are going to pick on the two vertices, shown in the figure below.

Once we select the second vertex, a blue arrow will appear, indicating the start point
of the curve, as shown below.

Since we are done selecting, we will click with the middle mouse button, then select
Done from the menu manager. We are now placed back into the CURVE: Thru
Points window. We are technically done defining all of the required elements. There
are still two optional elements we can define. We will double-click on Tangency from
the element list, which will bring up the menu manager shown at the top of the next
page.

Looking at the menu above, we are asked to pick a Curve, Edge or Axis that defines
the tangency for the start of our curve. On our model, the start point is highlighted
with a red circle, as shown below.

We will pick the edge at the top of the front surface that intersects this start point.
When we do, we will see the following on the model.
At the bottom of the menu manager, we see two options: Flip or Okay. The arrow
points towards the direction that tangency is measured from. Many times, you will
get it right the first time, and many times you will have to try again.

If we pick Okay at this point (with the arrow going away from the curve that we are
creating), we will get the following.

This is one of the times that we got it wrong. Not to worry, however. All we need to
do is pick on the Start menu item, pick the edge again, and this time flip the arrow,
then click on Okay. The result from doing it over looks like the following.

That is much better. Once we define the start point, it automatically jumps to defining
the End point. We will pick on its adjacent edge, and flip the arrow so it is pointing in
the direction shown at the top of the next page.
Once it is flipped to face in this direction, click on Okay to finish it. The curve now
looks like the following.

This looks pretty good – much better than the straight line we had originally. Now
that we have finished defining the references at each end for the tangency condition,
we are placed back at the start point, and a new menu item appears in the menu
manager, called Curvature.

If we select this, the curve will take on the curvature of the entity that acted as the
tangency reference. Since our entity was a straight edge, our curve will receive a
small straight portion to it at that end.

The figure at the top of the next page shows what would happen if we selected
Curvature for the start point.
If we click on the end point, and select Curvature for this end as well, we get the
following curve.

This is an even better curve, because it creates a smoother transition into the existing
edges. If we were to use this curve to create a surface between the two protrusions,
then our surface would have very good continuity with the surrounding surfaces.

We are done defining tangency conditions, so we can select Done/Return at the

bottom of the menu manager. We are placed once again into the CURVE: Thru
Points window. We can see one last optional element, called Tweak. If we double-
click on this element, we see the following window.
The curve on our model will show a control curve overlaid on it, as we can see below.

Using this menu, and/or dragging the control points on the model, we can adjust our
curvature even more, or shorten/lengthen the straight portion of the curve as it goes
into the adjacent edges.

This basically gives us more control to Tweak the shape of our curve. We are going
to cancel out of this tweak window by clicking on the red “X” in the lower left corner.
Back in our CURVE: Thru Points window, click on OK to finish this feature.

The resulting datum curve will look like the following.

USE CROSS-SECTION
We haven’t talked about creating cross-sections yet, so we’ll just go into a part that
already has one. The “Use Cross-Section Datum Curve” creates a curve that
represents the boundary of the entire cross section.

These curves are very useful for rib features, or other features that need a sketching
reference but the shape of the surrounding geometry does not allow for picking as a
sketcher reference. The curve segments at this area are always selectable.

To demonstrate this, we will go back to a model that we saw in Lesson 3 – Selecting

Objects (Selecting.prt). When we open it, it looks like the following.

To access the cross-section functionality, go to View, View Manager from the menu
bar. We will get the following window.
Click on the Xsec tab at the top to get to Cross-section functionality. The window will
now look like the following figure.

In this window, we can see a cross-section that already exists, called A. If your
section is not visible on the model, click on the A row in the main window. The cross
section looks like the following on the model when it is visible.
 Now, we can close out of this window (which will make the cross-section disappear
from the model), and create our curve.

To create a cross-section datum curve, click on the General Curve tool. When the
menu appears in the upper right corner of the screen, select Use Xsec, followed by
Done. The menu will list all of the available cross-sections in the model, as shown
below.

We can see the cross section “A” that we just looked at a minute ago. When we
select A from this list, the curve is automatically created, as shown below.

The curve takes on any external edge that the cross-section goes through. That is
why it goes around the entire part.

COPY CURVE (COMPOSITE)

There are many times when you will need to have a single curve defined. A
trajectory for a sweep might be a great example. However, many times you are
unable to create a single curve that captures what you want.

Therefore, you create multiple curves, and then you need a way to splice them all
together to form a single curve. This is where the Copy Curve comes in.

With this curve tool, you can select from existing edges or datum curves to form a
single curve. To demonstrate this, go back to the Dtm_Curve2 model that we just
worked with.
In this example, we want to create a single curve using the following three edges.

To create the copy curve, we first need to select the entities. Therefore, we will make
sure our Smart filter is turned on, and we’ll begin by selecting the solid protrusion so
it highlights in red. While this protrusion is highlighted, move your mouse over to the
edge labeled (1) in the figure above and select it. It should be bold, as shown in the
following figure.

Something unique to the copy curve feature is the fact that we can NOT hold down
the CTRL key and pick the other two entities. We must first hold down the SHIFT key
on the keyboard, then RE-SELECT the same edge that we already selected.

Once that edge is selected, keep the SHIFT key pressed and pick the other two
entities. They should all be bold, as shown below.

Now that all of our edges are selected, we will go to Edit, Copy from the menu bar
(or select Ctrl-C on your keyboard). Next, use Edit, Paste from the menu bar (or
select Ctrl-V on your keyboard).
When we do this, our model will look like the following.

There is a yellow arrow at one of the endpoints (in this case the right-most end),
which indicates the start point for the newly created curve. The little “T” symbols at
the ends represent the distance away from the end that we want to end the curve. A
value "0.00" will cause it to be at the exact length of the original geometry. Any value
other than 0.0 will cause the curve to extend beyond the geometry or end before the
vertex.

The default value is 0.000, which assumes that the new curve takes on the exact
length of the existing curves/edges.

The dashboard for this copy command looks like the following.

In the Curve Type field, we have two choices. They are:

• Exact – The new curve takes on the exact shape of the selected entities.
• Approximate – The new curve creates a C2 Continuous curvature condition
from existing C1 continuous entities.

The only potential problem with the “Approximate” option is that the new curve may
“liftoff” from the existing curves. The “Exact” option will keep the original curves as
they are. The only restriction with using the “Approximate” option is that the curves
already have to be tangent. Exact will allow you to use non-tangent entities.

Therefore, we will change the Curve Type to Exact, and then accept this feature.
The following figure shows the resulting curve in our model.
 The curve may be difficult to see that it extends into the existing edges, but if you pick
on it from the model tree to see it highlight, then you will see the figure above.

INTERSECT SURFACES
Another curve type is created by the intersection of two surfaces. To demonstrate
this, look at the following surface model (Dtm_Curve3).
We will make a datum curve at the intersection of these two surfaces. Therefore, we
will begin by changing our selection filter to Quilts, and then pick the cylindrical
surface, followed by the revolved surface.

The figure below shows both of these surfaces selected (in No Hidden viewing
mode).

Once both surfaces are selected, we will pick on the Intersect icon in the feature
toolbar, which looks like the following.

NOTE: There are three icons in the feature toolbar that look very similar. These are:

• Merge – Merges two surfaces together to form a single quilt.

• Trim – Uses a surface or a curve as a trimming tool to act on

another surface or curve.

• Intersect – Intersects two surfaces to form a datum curve, as we

see in this lesson.

Be sure you are grabbing the correct one. Once we select on the Intersect tool, the
datum curve should be created automatically, as shown in the following figure.
TRIM CURVE
Another operation that can be performed to create a new curve is to trim the curve
using another curve or surface as the trimming tool. In this example, we will use a
surface as a trimming tool.

Look at the following model (Dtm_Curve4).

We are going to use the surface as a cutting tool to remove the portion of the curve
that sticks out to the right of it.

When creating a trim curve feature, always start by selecting on the object that you
are trimming, in this case the curve. Use the Smart filter to select the curve, as
shown below. NOTE: If the curve is made of multiple segments, as it is in this case,
you will need to pick on the part of the curve that is being trimmed.
Once you have the curve selected, pick on the trim icon, as shown below.

When we enter this feature, we will click on the References slide-up panel in the
dashboard to see the different entities we are selecting. It will look like the following
figure.

We can see that the curve we selected shows up in the Trimmed Curve field. We
are prompted to select the Trimming object. We will pick on the extruded surface.
Our model now looks like the following.
 An arrow appears at the cut location, and points towards the part of the curve that we
want to keep. Flip the arrow if it is not pointing in the correct direction. Once you
approve of the cutting direction, click on the green check mark to accept this. The
curve will be trimmed up to the surface, as we can see in the following figure.

LESSON SUMMARY
Datum curves are very useful tools for creating other datum features, surfaces or
solid geometry. There are a variety of tools available for creating or editing curves.

The most common curve types are sketched and projected. Remember that with the
projected curve, normal to surface may give you results that you do not expect.

EXERCISES
Create a new part called Basket, and create the two sketched curves (as individual
curve features) that you see below (complete with dimensions). Create these on the
TOP datum plane as the sketching plane.
 Less
on

1
1

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Sweep feature.
SWEEP DEFINITION
A sweep feature is created by taking a sketched profile and sweeping it along a
sketched or selected trajectory. The cross-section of the feature along the entire
length of the trajectory is constant.

In a later chapter, we will learn all about variable section sweeps, and how you can
create a basic sweep in this feature. For now, we will concentrate only on the
standard sweep feature.

CREATING THE SWEEP

To create a sweep, you must use the menu bar, and go to Insert, Sweep. When you
pick on the Sweep menu, you will get another menu showing all of the different
options, as shown below.
Unlike the extrude and revolve features that we have already seen, the Sweep
feature makes you decide whether you are doing a Protrusion, Thin Protrusion, Cut,
Thin Cut or Surface. Once you decide, you can not change it without deleting the
feature and starting over.

The method for creating the five different types is identical, therefore we will
demonstrate this with a solid Protrusion. Therefore, we would select the Protrusion
menu option. Once we do this, we see the following window.

We saw a similar window earlier in lesson 8 when we created a datum curve through
points. We can see in this window that we are currently defining the trajectory for our
sweep. The menu manager appears just below this, and looks like the following.

We can either sketch a trajectory (if one does not yet exist), or select an existing set
of edges or datum curves for a trajectory. We will choose the Sketch Traj option to
sketch our trajectory. Once we pick this option, we get the next menu.

In this menu, we are asked to create or select a sketching plane. This is a different
way to prompt us for this information than we have been used to, but we will see this
type of prompt quite often with some of the more advanced (or less commonly used)
features. In this menu, the option to select an existing plane is already selected
(Plane). Therefore, we just need to pick the datum plane or planar surface that we
want as our sketching plane.

We will pick the TOP datum plane. When we do this, an arrow appears on the
model, as shown below.
In the message window, we are asked to select the direction for VIEWING the
sketching plane. The menu manager gives us two options, as shown at the top of the
next page.

We can either flip the direction then click on Okay, or accept the current selection by
clicking only on Okay. We will accept the downward direction for viewing. Once we
do this, the menu changes once more.

Here, we are asked to select or create the sketching reference plane and its
orientation. We will select the Bottom orientation, then pick on the FRONT datum
plane on the model. Once we do this, we are placed into sketch mode.

We will create the following sketch.

We notice a yellow arrow on the sketch. This is the start point for our trajectory. This
sketch is called an “Open Section”, since some of its endpoints are not touching each
other. In an Open Section, the start point must be one of the open endpoints of the
sketch (as it is above). If it is not, you must pick on one of the endpoints with the left
mouse button so it highlights, and then right mouse click and select Start Point.

The Start Point represents the location where your profile starts from. We want it to
be on the straight segment for this example. Once our sketch is complete, we accept
it by clicking on the blue check mark. We are then placed into the sketch for the
profile that we are sweeping.

We will create the following sketch for this profile.

When you sketch the sweep section (profile), there will always be a horizontal and
vertical reference line that forms a “Crosshairs”. This “Crosshairs” marks the location
of the start point. If you are not sure how you are looking at the trajectory, I strongly
recommend rotating your model slightly to see. You can always pick View,
Orientation, Sketch Orientation to return to the sketch view.

IMPORTANT! – When you have an open trajectory, you must have a closed section
for your profile for a solid protrusion. We will see how to handle a closed trajectory in
a few minutes.

Once you are done sketching the profile, accept this sketch. All of the elements are
now defined for this trajectory. We can click on OK from the window to complete the
feature. Our model now looks like the figure at the top of the next page.

The symbol for a sweep can be seen by looking at our model tree, as shown below.
CLOSED TRAJECTORIES
In this example, we will show the slight difference in creating a sweep that has a
closed trajectory. We will start the same way that we did before by going to Insert,
Sweep, Protrusion from the menu bar at the top.

We will continue the same way by sketching a trajectory, and then using the TOP
datum plane as our sketching plane, and FRONT datum plane facing towards the
Bottom.

Our sketch for our trajectory will look like the figure on the next page.

This is a simple closed rectangle. Once we are done sketching our trajectory and
accept our sketch, we get a different menu option.

Our two choices are:

• Add In Fcs – Add Inner Faces – This requires you to sketch an open profile,
and as it sweeps around, it connects across all of the open endpoints to form
 an inner face. This is great for closed picture frames, or other parts where
the outside is definitely a swept profile, but the middle is closed.
• No Inn Fcs – No Inner Faces – This requires you to sketch a closed profile.
There will be no inner face that results from this. This would be ideal for an
open picture frame (with no back plate).

In this example, we will select Add Inn Fcs, and then click on Done to continue. We
are now placed into our section for our profile. We will sketch an “OPEN” section, as
shown below.

We can see the two endpoints of this sketch. As the profile is swept around the
rectangle, the top endpoint will connect to itself at all locations across the center of
the part, while the bottom endpoint does the same. Everything in between becomes
a solid mass.

When we accept this sketch and click on OK to complete the feature, we can see the
following model.
 If we made a cross section through the middle, we would clearly see the solid mass
that was created, as shown below.

SWEEPING SURFACES
Sweeping surfaces is no different than sweeping protrusions, cuts, etc. The biggest
difference is that you don’t need to have a closed section. If you have an open
trajectory or closed trajectory, you can still have an open profile.

The biggest difference is that if the trajectory you are using is the edge of another
surface, you may be asked to Join or No Join. If you select Join, then you are
performing a Surface Merge at the same time. If you select No Join, then the new
swept surface will be separate from the surface whose edge acted as the trajectory,
and a merge operation will still need to be performed to get them to be one large
quilt.

SELECT TRAJECTORY
We will finish this lesson off with a demonstration of the select trajectory by picking
on an existing curve to create a swept surface. Let us look again at the following part
that we saw earlier.
If you recall, we have a copied curve that makes up the top left edge, the datum
curve in the middle, and the top right edge. We will use this curve as our trajectory
for our surface sweep.

NOTE: Sometimes copied curves do not work for regular sweeps if they lie in three
directions. The curve that we are using here is still a two-dimensional curve,
because it is co-planar with the front surface of our part.

We will start the sweep the same way, picking Insert, Sweep, Surface from the
menu bar. When prompted, pick on Select Traj to select the trajectory. You will then
see the following menu.

Since we are picking a datum curve, we will use the Curve Chain option, then pick
on the top left edge, as shown below.
When you pick on a single segment of a curve chain, we get a little menu that pops
up that looks like the following.

If you want the entire curve used as the trajectory, pick on Select All. If you only
want a certain portion, then select From-To and pick the starting and ending
endpoints of the curve. We want the entire curve, therefore we will pick Select All.
The entire curve highlights in blue, and our start point is shown with the blue arrow,
as we can see below.

Now that we have what we want for a trajectory, we click on Done to stop selecting
and accept what we have. Another arrow appears on the model, as shown below.
If you recall when we sketch the profile, there is a horizontal and vertical reference
line on the sketch at the location of the start point. When you select a trajectory,
Pro/ENGINEER wants to know which way to orient the sketch. It highlights an
adjacent surface or part of the trajectory selected, and in the message window it
says.

“Select upward direction of the horizontal plane for sweep section.” If we click on
Okay in the menu manager, then the front surface of our part will be facing up in the
sketch. You will want to pay close attention to which surface it is pointing, because it
may make it easier or harder to sketch your profile.

We will click on Okay to accept the default direction. Had there been more than one
possible surface to pick, it would have prompted us to first pick the surface that we
are going to face upwards before picking the direction.

With a surface feature, we are given the option to create end surfaces or leave them
open. The menu that comes up gives us these options, as shown below.

We will leave the ends open, so click on Done to continue. We are then placed into
sketch mode to sketch our profile. We will sketch an open profile (which if you
remember was not allowed for a solid protrusion). The figure at the top of the next
page shows our profile.
 We just sketched a straight line at an angle to the vertical reference. Once we are
done, we accept the sketch then click on OK to complete the feature. Our model
looks like the following.

LESSON SUMMARY
The sweep tool is used to pass a profile along a trajectory that you either sketch or
select.

Depending on the section for the trajectory (open or closed), you will have restrictions
on what type of section you can have in the profile.

For a closed trajectory, you can add inner faces or leave the part hollow. For
surfaces, you can also create end surfaces as well.
EXERCISES
Create the parts shown on the following pages. Use a combination of extrude,
revolve and sweep features where applicable, and create any datum geometry
necessary to complete your model.

Dash_Pot_Lifter
Basket_Prt (Continued)

Open up the Basket part that we started in lesson 8. Create a swept surface using
the inside trajectory. For the profile, sketch a line angled inwards from the trajectory
by 5 degrees to a depth of 18 inches, as shown below.
 Les
son

1
2
0

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Blend Feature.
BLEND DEFINITION
A Blend feature creates a single feature by blending sections of varying size, shape,
and orientation.

There are three types of blend features.

• Parallel – All sections are parallel to each other separated by a blind depth
for each section.
• Rotational – The sections are offset each other by an angle around a
central axis of revolution, and a distance along the axis itself.
• General – The sections can be rotated in the X, Y, or Z direction as you
create them.

To create a blend feature, we must use the menu commands Insert, Blend, then
select one of the feature types shown in the following menu.
 As with the sweep feature, the method for creating a blend is very similar from type
to type.

PARALLEL BLEND
To demonstrate the parallel blend, we will create a part called Parallel_Blend. We
will start by going to Insert, Blend, Protrusion. This brings up the following menu.

In the top portion of this menu, we are defining the type of blend we are going to
create. We will keep Parallel as the option. In the middle portion of this menu, we
are defining how the section will be handled. There are two options.

• Regular Sec – The section will be sketched on a plane or planar surface,

and remain there when blended together with the other sections.
• Project Sec – The section will be sketched on a plane, but it will be
projected onto a surface as part of the blend.

For now, we will keep the default option of Regular Sec as our choice. In the third
section, we only have Sketch Sec available. For a Rotational or General blend, we
would have the ability to select sections instead of sketching every one.

Once we have all of the options picked, we will click on Done. We will now be
placed into the definition of the feature, and we see the following window.

We are currently defining the attributes, which are in the following menu.
There are two attributes to choose from: Straight or Smooth. If our blend feature
only has two sections being blended together, then this will make no difference. If
our blend feature has three or more sections, then a straight attribute connects them
lienearly, almost like a connect the dot with straight lines.

A Smooth attribute connects them as a spline would going through points. You get a
continuous, tangent edge from section to section. To start, we will keep Straight
selected, and click on Done to continue.

We are now prompted to select or create a sketching plane. We will select the TOP
datum plane. When we pick this plane, an arrow appears, as shown below.

Unlike all of the other times when we were asked to accept the direction of viewing
the sketching plane, we see the following prompt in the message window: “Arrow
shows direction of feature creation. Pick FLIP or OKAY.”

We know we are still going to be looking at the TOP plane, but for a protrusion, the
feature always comes towards us in sketch mode, while for a cut, the feature always
goes away from us in the sketch. It will take a little getting used to, but eventually
you will understand just how the sketch is going to orient based on what you pick.

Therefore, click on Okay to accept the direction as up, then face the FRONT datum
plane towards the Bottom. We will now be placed in sketch mode.

We are going to sketch three rectangles to blend. We start by sketching the one that
will eventually lie on the sketch plane, as shown below.
I am taking advantage of symmetry by using two centerlines. That way I only need
to use two dimensions. I want to note where the start point is on this sketch. I will
demonstrate why this is important a little later. For now, we just want to make sure
that the start point is in the upper left corner for all three of our sketches.

Once I am done sketching this profile, I need to toggle to the next section using
Sketch, Feature Tools, Toggle Section. The first rectangle becomes grayed out,
and I can start sketching my second profile. The figure at the top of the next page
shows this sketch with the second rectangle.

Note how the start point on this rectangle is equivalent to the location on the first
one. Now we are ready to make our last rectangle. Once again, we will use
Sketch, Feature Tools, Toggle Section. Now both our rectangles are grayed out
for us to sketch the third, as shown below.
Once again, we are keeping the start point the same on all three. When we are
finished with this rectangle, we will accept the sketch. In the message window, we
are prompted for the depth of section 2. In other words, what is the blind depth
between the sketching plane and the second rectangle that we sketched. We will
enter 8.0. We are then prompted for the depth for section 3. This is the depth
between section 2 and 3 (not the distance from the sketching plane to section 3).
We will enter 5.0. We are then back at the window, where we can click on OK to
finish this feature. The model looks like the following.

You can clearly see what the Straight attribute does, it makes sharp edges between
sections. We will go to the model tree, right mouse click on this feature, and select
Edit Definition to go back in and redefine this feature.
We are placed back at the window where we see the different elements we defined.
The first one on the list is Attributes. If we double-click on this, we see the menu
again where we originally picked Straight. Now, this time, we are going to select
Smooth, followed by Done, then click on OK in the window to finish out the
redefine. The model will regenerate, and look like the following.

This is quite a difference. Now, we have tangent edges going through the three
sections. This makes for a more pleasing part. Now, we will edit the definition of
this feature again. When we see the window pop up, we will double-click on section,
followed by Sketch in the menu manager.

This will bring us back into the sketch, which now has the first rectangle active while
the other two are grayed out. We will turn off the display of dimensions and
constraints using the icons in the system toolbar for easier viewing of the sketch, as
shown below.

We will toggle to the next section, and change the start point. To change the start
point, click on a different vertex to highlight it, the right mouse click and select Start
Point. We want to use the next corner in a clockwise direction, as shown below.
Toggle to the third section, and change its start point to the one shown in the figure
below.

Once we have changed this last start point, accept the sketch, and then click on OK
from the window to finish the redefine. The model will regenerate, and it should now
look like the following.

There is a twisting effect going on here. The start point location is used to define
how the entities are connected. Imagine that the sketch starts off by connecting all
of the corners that have the start point, then it goes to the next clockwise corner for
each section and connects those, and so on. This is how we got the twisting,
because each section was connecting 90 degrees clockwise from the previous one.
ROTATIONAL BLEND
A rotational blend takes advantage of a sketched coordinate system. Instead of
sketching all the profiles in a single sketch like we did with the parallel blend, we only
sketch one, however, we must include a coordinate system in each sketch to tie the
sections together. This will make more sense in the following demonstration.

We will begin by creating a new part called Rotational_Blend. Once inside, we will
go to Insert, Blend, Protrusion from the menu bar. When the first menu comes up,
we will pick on the following options: Rotational, Regular Sec, and Sketch Sec.
This will bring up the following window.

We are currently defining the attributes. In addition to Straight and Smooth which
we had in the parallel blend, we have two other choices: Open and Closed, as
shown at the top of the next page.

We will see the difference between these two during this example. For now, we will
keep the default of Open, select Smooth from the top choices, then click on Done
to continue. We are prompted to select a sketching plane. We are going to pick
FRONT. When we do, an arrow appears on the front plane, as we have seen it do
many times before.
This time, however, the message window is asking for us to pick the direction of
VIEWING the sketching plane again. The lesson you should have learned by now is
to always look at the message window to see what you are being asked. It will save
you a lot of time later.

We will accept this direction of viewing by clicking on Okay, then we will select the
TOP plane to face towards the Top. Inside the sketch we will create our first
section, which looks like the following.

The first sketch will be the only one that contains sketcher references. We want to
create a sketched coordinate system and locate it at the intersection of the two
sketcher references. The coordinate system shows the sketch as lying in the X-Y
plane, where Y is going upwards. Once we have finished creating this sketch, we
accept it.

In the message window, we are prompted to enter the rotation angle about Y. Using
the right hand rule (thumb points in the direction of Y, and the direction your fingers
curl represents the positive angle), we will enter a value of 30 degrees.

We are then placed into a new section. We are going to sketch the same profile as
we did before. HINT: Use Sketch, Data from File, then click on the “In session”
icon (little blue computer screen) to list all of the current sections that are in
memory. The latest one on the list represents the one you are currently working on,
so the one before that numerically is the last one that you did. Retrieve or sketch
the following for the second section.

You will notice that there is a coordinate system in this sketch, because it is what
ties this section’s location to the first one. Once we are done with this sketch, accept
it. Down in the message window, we are asked if we want to continue on to another
section. We will type Y for “Yes” and hit the enter key.

We will now be asked for the rotation angle for the next section about the Y axis.
This will be the angle between section 2 and 3, so we will enter 60 degrees. We will
be placed into the sketch, where we will create the figure at the top of the next page.
This sketch has different dimension values for the arc and the horizontal dimension
at the top. If you choose to re-use a previous sketch, you will need to make these
adjustments before moving on to the next section. Once you are done, accept this
sketch, answer Y to create another section and then enter 60 for the angle.

Create the following sketch for the fourth section.

Accept this sketch and answer Y to create another section. Enter 30 degrees for
this last angle, then sketch the following.

Once we are done with this last section, we will accept it, then answer N so that we
don’t go on to another section. We will be placed back at the feature window. This
time, make sure shading is turned on, and hit the Preview button in the window.
Your model should look like the following.

Looking at the window, we can see there is an optional element we did not define.
This is called Tangency, and it allows you to specify other surfaces that the open
sections might be tangent to. In our model, we do not have any other features, so
we really can not use this option at this time.
 We will, however, change our attribute value. Double-Click on Attributes, and
change the option from Open to Closed. Make sure you still have Smooth
selected. Click on Done to accept this choice, then OK to finish the feature. You
will now see the following model.

So, have you guessed how the Closed attribute works? It takes the first and last
sections (as long as they are not touching), and attempts a revolve around the Y
axis, blending the two together. It just happened that our first and last sections were
identical, so it was able to create a semi-circular revolve to blend the two.

If you just looked at this model without knowing that it only took one feature to create
this, you might think it was made up of complex surfaces, and datum curves, etc.
This just goes to show you that you can get pretty complex shapes with very little
feature headcount or complexity.

GENERAL BLEND
A General Blend combines the parallel and rotational blends, and adds the ability to
rotate about more than one axis. Consider the following part (General_Blend.prt).
We can see the sections in the order in which we are going to pick them. These
sections are already sketched datum curves. When creating general blends, it is
often easier to create your sections as curves before you create the feature.

We will create the blend by going to Insert, Blend, Protrusion from the menu bar.
At the first menu, we want to select the following options: General, Regular Sec, and
Select Sec. We will hit Done to continue.

The window for the general blend opens up as follows.

This is the same window that we saw for the rotational blend, but the options we pick
a little later will be different because we chose to select the sections. For the
attributes, select Smooth, followed by Done.

The following menu comes up.

We are being asked to select the first curve. We want to select all four edges of each
rectangle, so we are going to select on the Sel Loop option in the lower part of the
menu, then pick on the first section curve, as shown below.

We can see that all four edges of this curve were selected, and we have a start point
in the upper left corner. As we rotate our model around to select the other entities,
we want to make sure we pick the same corner or we’ll get that twisting effect we saw
earlier. Once we have the curves selected, pick on Done. We should see the same
menu again (almost as if it didn’t take our previous selection). This is normal,
because we have to specify at least two sections.

We are going to pick the Sel Loop menu command again, and this time we will select
the second rectangle. When we pick it, it looks like the following.

All four edges were selected, but our start point is not in the right place. Therefore,
click on the Start Point menu command, and pick the upper left corner. Once we do
this, our sketch will update as follows.

Even though the arrow is pointing in a different direction, the fact that it is on the
upper left corner is all that we care about. Pick on Done to finish this second section.
 In the message window, we are asked if we want to continue on to the next section.
Type in Y for yes. Repeat the process of picking using the Sel Loop command until
all of the remaining three sections have been picked and the start points for all of
them is in the correct orientation.

On the last section, we want to make sure that the point selected when looking from
a top view is the lower left corner (because we want the part to rotate up 90 degrees
at this point.

Once all of our sections are done, answer N to the last prompt about creating
additional sections, then click on OK in the feature window to complete it. Our final
feature looks like the following.

If the general blend fails, it is most likely that one of the start points was in the wrong
location. Go back into the sections to fix any that were failing.

LESSON SUMMARY
Blends are a great tool to create complex transitions between different shapes. You
can accomplish with a single blend feature what you might take dozens of surfaces,
datum features and other entities to create, so don’t be afraid to try them.

You can either select sections or sketch them. Parallel blends will only let you sketch
all of the sections in a single sketch using Toggle to go between them.

Always check the start points in the sections. Arranging them in different locations
can cause twisting to occur, or feature failure.

EXERCISES
Create the part shown on the next page. Use a blend feature to create the main
shaft of this part. Use Extrude and Revolve features for the remainder of the
features.

Hand_Rail_Column
 Les
son

1
3
0

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Rounds.

ROUND USAGE
Rounds are used to remove sharp edges/corners in your model. They are generally
very easy to create, but very easy to fail. For this reason, they should be modeled as
some of the last features in your part, unless they are needed to complete another
feature (other than another round).

Rounds that add material should be created separate from rounds that remove
material, especially if they potentially intersect each other.

There are basically two types of rounds: Constant – the radius value is the same
along the entire length being rounded, and Variable – the radius can change along
the length being rounded.

Both of these rounds are created using the same round tool.

CREATING ROUNDS
To create rounds, click on the following icon in the feature toolbar.

Specify references to round. The thing to keep in mind is the concept of round sets.
A round set is a single, tangent edge, or multiple, tangent edges that all have the
same radius value. You can create as many round sets as you need (following the
rule about adding/removing material).

To pick multiple edges to be in a single round set, use the Ctrl key on your keyboard,
then pick the edges. To create a new round set, simply pick a new reference without
holding down any keys on the keyboard.
 You can still use the Shift key to get a chain of edges.

CONSTANT ROUNDS
SELECTING EDGES

We will start by demonstrating how to create round sets with constant radii values.
To do this, we will open up a part called Headset, which will initially look like the
following.

We will start creating rounds by picking on the round icon. In the dashboard, we will
click on the Sets slide-up panel to see its contents. The dashboard looks like the
following with the panel open.
We can see a column in the upper left. This column will keep track of the different
round sets that we create. To the right of this column are several fields that define
the shape of the round. The default, and most commonly used settings are shown
above (Circular cross-section for the round, and Rolling Ball for the type of milling
operation that would create such a round). There are other settings, but since they
are not widely used, they will not be discussed in this guide.

In the References field, we will see a tally of entities that we select for the current
active round set.

Below this is a field that lists the radius values used for the active round set. We will
see this field in more detail when we talk about variable rounds. Right now, there are
no references picked (hence the “No Items” text in the References field).

We will start by picking on the sharp edge at the top of the model. When we pick on
it, it will highlight in a bold red, and a preview of the round with its current radius
dimension will show up, as we can see in the figure below.

We can drag the white squares to dynamically update the radius value, or we can
double-click on the radius dimension itself and enter a new value. We are going to
change this radius to 0.7. The model will update, as shown below.

If we look back at the Sets panel, we can see the first round set listed, and we can
see the references field includes the single edge that we picked. The radius value
appears in the lower field, and in the icon bar at the very bottom of the dashboard.
Now, without holding down the Ctrl key, we will select one of the vertical edges at the
other end of the rounded surface. Once we have one of them selected, we will hold
down the Ctrl key to select the other. With both selected, modify the radius value to
1.2. Our model should look like the following figure.

The Sets panel now shows the second round set, the two edges used for this set,
and the radius value applied.
It is currently the active round set because it shows up in red and yellow on the
model. The first round set should be a muted cream color (when using the standard
color scheme). In my illustrations, it appears as a dark gray outline of the dynamic
preview for the round.

Now, we will create a third round set and pick the bottom two vertical edges.
Remember to start the round set by picking on one of the edges without holding
down any keys on the keyboard. Once you have the first edge selected, use the Ctrl
key to select the other. Initially, they will take on the radius value of the previous
round set, as we can see in the following figure.

What we actually want is to remove the surface at the bottom with a full round that
goes all the way around, forming a semi-circle. We could enter a radius value that is
equal to half of the width of the part, but if we later change the width, the round might
fail, or at the least, no longer be a full round.

To preserve design intent, we will turn this round set into a full round. Looking at the
Sets slide-up panel, we can see the third round set highlighted.
To the right of the sets list, we can see a button that is called Full Round. It will only
be available if the current round set has two edges that are across from each other
on the same surface.

Picking on this button gives us the following result on the model.

We can see that the radius value has disappeared. If we look at the sets panel, the
radius value is dimmed here as well.
Now that we have all three round sets defined, we will click on the accept icon to
complete this round feature. The model looks like the following.

If we were to look at the model tree, we would only see one round feature listed. This
single round feature contains three separate round sets.

We will create one additional round for this model at this time, and that will be along
the entire top edge of the model, with a radius value of 0.4. To create this, we will
pick on the round icon, and then select one of the edges. It will automatically assume
that any tangent edges to the one that we selected should also be rounded. This is a
good assumption, because 99% of the rounds created are intended to round an
entire tangent chain of edges.

The preview for this round looks like the following.

Accepting this gives us the following model at this time.

We will save this model and come back to it later.

SURFACE TO SURFACE ROUND

In addition to selecting edges to round, we may also select two surfaces that share a
common edge. Look at the following model (Round2.prt).

We are going to round the front, top edge by selecting two surfaces that share this
edge. Therefore we will go into the round tool. Instead of picking on the edge (which
is probably the easiest thing to do), we will pick on the left front surface, and then
hold down the Ctrl key and pick the top flat surface. We will see a preview of the
round, as shown below.
We will modify the radius to 0.5, and then accept this round feature. Our round will
look exactly like an edge round, as we can see below.

ROUND THROUGH CURVE

Another type of round is one that rounds an edge chain, but the radius is controlled
by a datum curve or set of nearby tangent edges. We will continue with the same
model as the previous section to demonstrate this.

We can see from the figures on the previous page, that we have a datum curve
sketched on the top surface. We are going to use this datum curve to define the
radius for an edge round on the back edge.
We will start by clicking on the round tool. We will pick the edge that we want to
round first, as we can see in the following figure.

Then, we will expand the Sets slide-up panel to see the options, as shown below.
In this panel, we see a button entitled Through Curve. We want to pick on this.
When we do, the panel will change slightly, as we can see below.

Instead of the field at the bottom with the radius values, we now have a field used to
define the curve that we are going to follow. We will pick the datum curve on the
model, and when we do, we will see the dynamic preview of the round.
We will accept this round, and our model will now look like the following.

THROUGH VERTEX/POINT ROUND

The last constant round we will demonstrate is one that uses a nearby vertex or
datum point to define the radius value.

Look at the figure below to see the model that we are going to work with
(Round3.prt).

We are going to round the front edge at the base of the rim that sticks up from the top
of this part. But, we want the round to come up to the front edge. We could measure
this distance and use that for the round, but if we change the model, that round will
remain at a fixed radius.

Therefore, we want to use a vertex on the front edge as the radius value. That way,
if we change the dimensions of the model, the round remains up to the front edge.

We will start by going into the round tool, and select the edge to round, as shown
below, and use a value of 0.100.

We can see that the round goes up to the top of the rim, but stops short of the front.
We will open up the Sets panel to make our change.

At the bottom of this panel, we see a field with the word Value in it. This field is used
to determine how the radius is measured. Value means that we are going to enter a
dimension value for the radius. This is the most common way to specify the radius,
and that is why it is the default value.

If we pull-down this field, we see another option, called Reference. Reference allows
us to specify the location by picking on existing geometry. The following figure shows
what we are going to pick.

Once we select the vertex, our round should update, and the dimension value should
disappear. We see a reference to the vertex instead.

In the lower right corner of the dashboard, we will click on the preview button (the
eyeglasses) to see what this would look like if we accepted it right now.
VARIABLE ROUNDS
A variable round is one that changes in radius value as it traverses its edge. To
demonstrate this, we are going to open the Var_Round model, which looks like the
figure below.

We want to round the top edge where the extruded and the revolved protrusions
meet. We notice at the very right end of this edge, we come very close to the side of
the plate. We could create a constant radius around this entire edge, but it will create
a very ugly condition at the end, because it won’t be able to maintain its nice shape
all the way to the endpoint.

Therefore, we are going to taper the round at this point. To do this, we will go into
the round feature, and then select on one of the segments of this tangent chain of
edges. Initially, the radius may come in very large. We want to modify it to 0.075,
which will be our primary radius value for this edge. The round will initially look like
the following.
You can see with the dynamic preview (shown above) that the round does not go all
the way to the end as a constant radius. Therefore we need to make this a variable
round. In order to make this a variable round, we need more than one radius. To
add additional radii, hold the right mouse button down over one of the white squares
(drag handles) where you see the existing radius dimension.

When we do this, we should get an option to Add Radius, as shown below.

When we select this option, the existing radius dimension will snap to one end of the
tangent edge chain, and a new radius will appear at the opposite end, as we can see
in the figure at the top of the next page.
We could change the dimension value at the end now, but it would create a gradual
taper across the entire length. We actually only want to start tapering as we come
across the top of the rounded edge. Therefore, we will need another radius.

Holding the right mouse button over one of the drag handles on the leftmost
dimension, we will select the Add Radius option again. It creates a new radius point,
but places it on the same segment that the existing radius is on, as shown below.

We can see from the above figure that it has the same radius value as the original
(0.075), but it also has another dimension (0.200). This is the length ratio for this
radius. In other words, it represents how far along the current segment it lays in
terms of a percent of the length. If we wanted this radius to be exactly at the
midpoint of this arc, we would change this dimension to 0.5.

To move the radius to its proper location, we could place our mouse cursor over the
white circle (which sits on the edge being rounded), and slowly drag it across the
edge. You must keep your mouse cursor over the edge as you drag it, otherwise it
doesn’t work.
For a very long edge, this could take some time. Instead, we are going to specify the
exact location ourselves. To do this, open up the Sets panel. We can see the three
radius points in the field at the bottom of this panel, as shown below.

For points 1 and 2 (which are at the endpoints of the tangent edge), we can see a
Location called out as Vertex:Edge… For the third point (the new one that we just
added), we can see a location of 0.200 (which was our length ratio). Below this field,
we can see the word Ratio in a pull-down field.

To specify an exact location, we will use the pull-down to select Reference. When
we do this, we can pick the exact vertex or datum point where we want to place the
radius. We will pick on the vertex of the round going across the top, as shown in the
following figure.
Now that we have specified all of the radius points, it is time to modify the values.
The design intent for this round is to maintain the 0.075 radius until we get to the
rounded edge, then taper down to a 0.0 radius value at the small end.

Therefore, we will modify the rightmost dimension to 0.0. Our dynamic preview will
show us the result.

This is exactly what we want, so we will accept this round. The nice thing about the
dynamic preview is that you can use it as a gauge to let you know if the feature will
work or not. If the dynamic preview shows gaps across the edge, or is not visible at
all, then the feature will not work. NOTE: Not all features in Pro/ENGINEER use a
dynamic preview, however, so don’t get confused if you do not see one. You can
always click on the full preview icon to test it before accepting it.

Our final model looks like the following.

ROUND TRANSITIONS
So far, we have only been talking about round sets. When you create a round
feature, you start by defining all of the round sets. In many cases, that is all you have
to do. There are some cases, however, where you will need to define transitions.

A transition is generally needed when two or more round sets converge at a non-
tangent location, such as a sharp corner. The transition defines how the shape of the
round will behave at such a location.

To demonstrate this, we will open up the following part (Round4.prt)

We want to round the three edges that converge into the sharp corner where the two
protrusions meet. Each one of these rounds needs a different radius value per our
design intent. The following figure shows what we want to do.
We know that we can create three separate round sets, each with a unique radius
value, so that is how we will start.
We will go into the round tool, then select the three edges as separate round sets,
and give each their respective radius value. It will not matter which order we go in,
only that we have three separate round sets. The following figure shows these three
sets after their radii values have been modified.

We can see that the dynamic preview for the three do not meet at the corner. They
each have their own stopping point (at the ends of their segments). We will need to
define a transition to ease these three rounds together. The Sets panel at this point
looks like the following.
Down in the lower left corner of the dashboard, we see two icons, as follows.

The left icon is used to define Sets. It is selected as a default when you create a
round. The icon on the right is used to define Transitions. We will click on that now.
In the model, any transition will highlight. You will have a possible transition at each
of the following.
• Intersection of two or more rounds at a non-tangent location
• Any free end of a round set (where the end of the round is)

Our model has four potential transitions we could define, as shown below.
We only need to worry about the transition where the three round sets meet. If you
move your mouse over the transition, it will pre-highlight. Select it so it becomes
active. When active, it will turn yellow, as shown in the following figure.

In the dashboard, we will see a field that lists the current, default transition type.

The default transition type in this case is a Round Only 1. That is what you see in
the preview on the model. If we use the pull-down arrow, we can see the other
transition types that would work for this intersection.
They are shown in the following figure.

There are actually more transition types in Pro/ENGINEER, but you will only see the
ones that will work at this time. If we move our mouse over the transition in this pull-
down list, and watch our model at the same time, we will see it dynamically preview
the transition in blue.

If I move the mouse over the Patch transition type, I would see the following preview
on the model.

You can see that there are still some gaps in this transition type, so I would not put a
lot of faith in the transition looking like it does above. If I place my mouse over the
Round Only 2 transition type, I would see the following.
 This looks as if it will bring my two larger rounds to a sort of chamfer, then round the
top edge with the smallest round. I will go ahead and accept the default Round Only
1 transition type, then accept the round feature to complete it. Our final model looks
like the following.

Just in case you are wondering what the result is for the other two transitions, here
they are.

As I mentioned before, the Patch preview looked like it wasn’t working properly, so it
defaulted to a Round Only 2 condition. That is why they both look the same.

LESSON SUMMARY
It is very easy to create rounds in Pro/ENGINEER, but you should try to create most
of them as the last features, since they are primarily used to remove sharp corners.
 The best reason for putting them last in the model is because they are often
suppressed before exporting the model to an analysis package, such as ANSYS. If
you must create them early, it should be because you need them for downstream
features.

You should always avoid creating a non-round feature by tying it to an existing

round. For example, you should not create an extrude feature and “Use Edge” on the
round in the sketch. Of course, there are always exceptions in rare cases.

Create multiple rounds into a single set if they have the same radius value. Use Ctrl
to do this. Create multiple round sets if you need different radius values. For
multiple round sets that converge to non-tangent corners or edges, define transitions
to smooth out the round.

EXERCISES
Open up the Hand_Rail_Column.prt part that we created in Lesson 12. Add the
rounds shown in the figure on the next page.
Open up the Dash_Pot_Lifter and apply the rounds shown below. HINT: The order
in which you create the rounds will have an effect on your ability to create them.
 Les
son

1
4
0

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Edge and Corner
Chamfers.
CHAMFER USAGE
The chamfer tool is used to create a bevel on an edge or corner. I truly believe that it
is an under-used feature. Many times, people will use an extruded cut or a swept cut
to accomplish this, but you are adding complexity and regeneration time when a
simple chamfer can be used.

Just like the round tool, there are no sketches that need to be created, you only have
to pick on edges or corners to chamfer, then modify dimensions.

Also like the round tool, you can create sets with transitions.

EDGE CHAMFERS
To demonstrate an edge chamfer, we will use the following model (Chamfer.prt).

To access the Edge Chamfer functionality, click on the following icon in the feature
toolbar.
When we enter into the edge chamfer tool, we see the following dashboard (with the
Sets panel opened up).

The top of the dashboard lists the different chamfer sets we create. The middle
portion is used to list references for each set. The next field down will list the values
entered for angles or linear dimensions.

Down in the icon bar, we can see the familiar Sets and Transitions icons, but the
next field over is new. This field is used to pick the chamfer scheme. There are four
schemes to choose from, as shown below.

These are:
• D X D – You only need to specify the edge to be chamfered, and the
distance away from that edge (D). It creates a chamfer that is symmetric
about the edge selected.
• D1 X D2 – You specify the edge to be chamfered, and then you edit two
linear dimensions. The chamfer is created with the ends of the chamfer at
the distances specified from the edge.
• Angle X D – You specify the edge to be chamfered, and then enter a value
for an angle and a linear dimension. You can reverse the direction of the
chamfer with a single click.
• 45 X D – This creates a chamfer that is identical to the D X D. The
difference is how it reports on a drawing when dimensions are shown. We
will see this in more detail when we cover drawing mode.

The following figure graphically shows how these different schemes work.
For now, we are going to keep the D X D chamfer scheme selected, and then pick on
the edge shown in the figure below.

Change the “D” dimension value to 0.500 so it looks like the figure above. When we
go to our Sets panel, we see the following.

At the bottom of the sets panel, we have a few other things we can define. The first
field, that shows the word Value, can be used to switch to Reference. Choosing
reference lets us pick a vertex or other entity to determine the distance “D”.

The other field, which says Offset Surfaces determines how “D” is measured.
Currently, it is set to go along the edge at a distance “D” from the surfaces that
intersect where the edge is being chamfered. This is the most common method for
doing chamfer dimensioning. You can also choose to determine the distance from a
tangent reference which you will pick. We will not demonstrate this, but you are
encouraged to try it out for yourself.
We are going to continue to create additional chamfer sets. Just like we did in the
creation of rounds, if we hold down the Ctrl key, we would add more edges to the
current chamfer set. If we just pick a new reference without holding the Ctrl key
down, then it starts a new set. We will pick on the back edge of the model, as shown
below.

Only after you start a new chamfer set can you change the scheme. Once we pick
the edge shown above, we select a D1 X D2 scheme, then modify our values to the
ones shown above.

Now, our panel looks like the figure at the top of the next page.

We will create one more Chamfer set for this chamfer feature. Without holding down
the Ctrl key, select the rim of the topmost hole, then hold down the Ctrl key and
select the other rim. Once you start this round set, change over to an Angle X D
scheme, and modify the D value to 0.25 and the Angle to 60.0 degrees. Your model
should initially look like the following.
The entire dashboard at this time looks like the following.

We can see the Angle X D scheme is selected, and the values of our angle and
linear dimensions. At the very far right of these icons and fields is an icon with a blue
slanted line and two arrows. Use this to reverse the direction of the chamfer. When
we do this, our model will now look like the following.
We will accept our chamfer once we are done defining these three sets. Our model
will look like the following.

We will now create one more chamfer feature. This time we will use the 45 X D
scheme, modify our “D” value to 0.25 and select the edge of the model shown below.

Once we have done this, accept this chamfer feature. The final model will look like
the following.
CORNER CHAMFERS
A corner chamfer creates a bevel on a corner of a part. To demonstrate this, we are
going to open up the Corner_Chamfer part, which is a simple 5 x 3 x 2 rectangular
block, as shown below.

There is no icon in the feature toolbar to access this feature, so we must use Insert,
Chamfer, Corner Chamfer from the menu bar, as shown below.

When we do this, it brings up the following window.

The first thing we are asked to do is select the corner to chamfer. We will pick the
front right corner. One of the edges will highlight, as shown below. (NOTE: Your
edge may be different from my edge, and that is okay for this demonstration).

In the menu manager, we see the following choices.

Enter-input is used to type in an exact dimension value measured along that

highlighted edge from the specified corner. For quick creation of the chamfer, we can
initially use Pick Point and pick anywhere on the edge. We will use this option, and
pick approximately halfway along the length of this highlighted edge.

Once we select the first point, another one of the edges will highlight in a faint green
color, as shown below.
We will pick approximately halfway along this edge as well. Once we pick, the edge
that we just picked on will become highlighted in a bold red (just as the first one did),
and the last edge will highlight in green.

As with the other two, we will pick approximately halfway along the length of this little
edge. Once we do this, all three edges become highlighted in the bold red color, and
we can pick OK from the feature creation window to finish this corner chamfer.

Our finished chamfer looks like the following.

Now that we have the chamfer, we will select it from the model tree, click with the
right mouse button, and select Edit. This will bring up the dimensions for the corner
chamfer, as shown below.

We will double-click on each dimension and modify its value to be the entire length of
the line that the dimension is on. When we modify the dimensions, they will turn
green, indicating that they have not been regenerated yet, as shown below.
 We will click on the regenerate icon in the system toolbar ( ), and our final
chamfer will look like the figure below.

LESSON SUMMARY
Use chamfers when you need to create a bevel on an edge. It is better to use a
chamfer than an extrude or sweep feature (when applicable) because it does not
involve any sketching. It will regenerate faster as well.

Create chamfer sets just as you did with the round feature. Use Ctrl to add edges to
the same set with the same dimensioning scheme (D X D, for example). Or, select a
new edge to create a new round set, then change the scheme for that set.

Use Pick Point for corner chamfers as a quick and easy way to initially create the
chamfer, then Edit the dimension values to get exact results. This is especially
important if you don’t know the length of the line on which the corner chamfer
dimension is being measured, but you can always pick on that line.

EXERCISES
Finger_Guide

Create the model shown on the next page. NOTE: You may need to play around
with chamfer transitions if you create the cuts first.
 Les
son

1
5
0

Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Draft Feature, including
constant draft, variable draft, split draft, etc.
DRAFT USAGE
You create a draft feature to remove perpendicularity between model surfaces and
the parting line (for molded parts). This is such a critical feature for many of the
products we design. At the end of this lesson, we will also see how to perform a draft
check.

Before we begin, we need to define a few key terms.

DRAFT SURFACES

These are the model surfaces that draft will be applied to. They can be solid
surfaces or surfaces created as actual surface features. There are only two rules
that are applied to draft surfaces.
• They must be closed in on the top, sides and bottom. Therefore, you can
not extrude a single line as a surface, then expect to add draft to that
surface, because there is no top, side or bottom surfaces.
• Any tangency with adjacent surfaces may cause the draft to fail. For
example, suppose you have a rectangular block. You want to add draft to
the front of the block, but you already have a round at the top edge. This
front surface can not be used for draft.

DRAFT HINGES

These are planes, planar surfaces, datum curves or model edges that act as the axis
of rotation for the drafted surfaces. When defining the draft hinge as a plane or
planar surface, be aware of the distance from the surface being drafted, because it
does affect it. When defining curves or edges for the draft hinge, you must also
supply another entity to define the “Pull Direction” or the direction the part comes out
of the mold.

The following figure shows the potential problem with choice of draft hinge when
using planes or planar surfaces.
 Looking at the figures above, there is a datum curve that shows the original surface
that is being selected as the Draft Surface. In the figure on the left, we use the top
surface of the model as the Draft Hinge. In the figure on the right, we use a datum
plane above the model.

When the draft is calculated, it will project the draft surface up to the draft hinge, then
apply the angle at their intersection. We can see that the overall width of the top of
the part on the left is still the original length, but we’ve actually made the part bigger
on the right.

DRAFT ANGLE

The draft angle is the dimension value applied to the surface. There is a maximum of
30 degrees that can be applied as a draft. If you need more than 30 degrees, you
will need to use a different modeling method, such as extrude, sweep, etc.

CREATING DRAFTS
The draft tool is located in the Feature Toolbar, in the top most grouping of blue
icons, and looks like the following.

To demonstrate the new draft tool, we will open up the model entitled Draft1.prt. It
will initially look like the following.
We are going to draft all of the vertical surfaces in this model. Therefore, we start by
clicking on the Draft icon in the Feature Toolbar. The dashboard (with the references
panel open) looks like the following.

When creating a draft feature, the first thing you specify are the surfaces to be
drafted. This is the top field in this References panel, and is activated by default.
That is why it is not a field at the bottom of the dashboard.

Therefore, we will select all of the surfaces (using the Ctrl key) that are shown in the
next figure.

Once all of these surfaces are selected, we need to click into the Draft Hinges field
(either in the References panel, or by picking the first field in the dashboard). With
this field active, we can pick a planar surface, datum plane, or chain of edges/curves
to act as our draft hinge.

Therefore, using selecting techniques learned in lesson 3, we will pick the chain of
tangent edges that go around the top, as shown in the next figure.

Since we did not use a plane or planar surface as our draft hinge, we must pick a
datum plane or other planar surface in the model that is perpendicular to the pull
direction. First, however, we must pick in the Pull Direction field to activate it. Once
activated, click on the TOP datum plane in the model tree. At this time, all elements
are defined, so we can see an angle on our model for the draft, as shown in the
following figure.

NOTE: If you don’t see the yellow arrow and angle dimension, you have not defined
enough references for this draft feature.
We can drag the handle for the angle dimension to dynamically see the draft preview
update. We want to make sure we are drafting outwards as we go down from the top
of the model. Once your draft is going in the right direction, enter 8.0 as the draft
angle.

Our preview now looks like the following.

Click on the green check mark to complete this first draft feature. The model will look
like the next figure.
 Save this model for later, and then close it.

SPLIT
In Pro/ENGINEER, you can split a draft up with datum planes or sketch features. To
demonstrate how to split draft, we will open the model entitled Draft2.prt, which looks
like the following.

We will start by creating a draft feature. For our draft surface, we will pick the
following surface.

Once this surface is selected, click into the Draft Hinges field, and pick on the
FRONT datum plane as our neutral plane. When we do this, our model automatically
assumes the pull-direction plane is the same as the existing draft hinge that we
picked. We can change this if we want, but we will leave it the way it is. Our model
now shows the arrow and angle.

Change the angle value to 5.0, and our model will now look like the following.

So far we haven’t done anything related to splitting up the draft. The fact that we
used a plane in the middle of the part as our draft hinge has only resulted in rotating
the selected surface about that plane as draft was applied. We will now apply the
split.

To do this, open up the Split slide-up panel, which looks like the following.

Currently, the Split Options field is set to “No Split”. We will use the pull-down to
select a different option. We have two additional options:
1. Split by Draft Hinge – Causes the surface to break at the FRONT datum plane,
and each side will be drafted independently.
2. Split by Split Object – We can select or sketch a profile that splits up our part.
The object must lie on the surface being drafted, and it must be planar. We can
not split using a projected curve on a non-planar surface.

We will choose the Split by Split Object option. This activates the Split Object field,
and we will pick on the oval datum curve on the model. When we do this, our Split
window looks like the following.
The model currently looks like the following.

We can see a clear independent oval surface in the middle of our existing drafted
surface. We can also see two dimensions, one that will control the draft on the large
surface, the other on the oval surface.

We are not done yet. We want to remove the draft from the original surface, causing
only the oval surface to remain drafted. To do this, we go back to our Split panel. At
the bottom, in the “Side Options” field, the current value is Draft sides
independently. There are three other options in this pull-down field. These are:

1. Draft Sides Dependently – Both surfaces will have the same, but opposite draft
angle. Only one dimension will control both.
2. Draft First Side Only – Only the large surface will contain draft, the oval surface
will remain flat.
3. Draft Second Side Only – Only the oval surface will contain draft. The large
surface will remain flat.

We will use the Draft Second Side Only to give the illusion that we are creating a
light switch. When we select this option, our model will look like the following.

We will change the angle to 10.0 degrees, making our switch more pronounced, and
then click on the green check mark to complete this draft feature. Our final model
looks like the following.
VARIABLE DRAFT
The draft feature also allows you to make variable draft. It works just like the variable
round tool. You would right click on the angle dimension and use Add Angle. This
creates a second angle.

The biggest difference is that both angles don’t automatically jump to other locations.
You will need to drag these angles to the locations you want and then modify their
values.

DRAFT ANALYSIS
The Draft Check analysis is a little more streamlined in this release, as are many of
the other analysis types. To perform a draft check on this model (Draft2.prt), we
would go to Analysis, Geometry, Draft from the Menu Bar. This brings up the
following interface.
We can run a quick check on the model, or we can retrieve a saved analysis that we
have already created. We will keep the Quick option selected, and the click on the
Definition tab at the top. This will bring up the following.

By default, we are being prompted to pick on the surfaces to check. To check an

entire part, we hold the mouse cursor over the model so that one of the features
highlights in blue. Then, we continue to click (slowly) with our right mouse button
until the entire model highlights in blue, and we see our status window (or the tool tip)
indicate SolidGeom, as shown in the following figure.

Once we see this condition, click with the left mouse button to select the entire part.
Now, we will skip over the next field and go straight to the Draft Angle section in our
window. For this, we are going to pick on the icon that has the arrows going in both
directions (this indicates the “Both Sides” option). Then, we are going to enter the
minimum draft we are checking against. In this model, we are going to check against
5.0 degrees.
Once we have entered this data, we will pick in the Direction field and select on a
plane or planar surface that is perpendicular to the pull direction. In our example we
will pick on the top flat surface (not the oval surface).

Our window looks like the following once we have done all of this.

Our model will be shaded in colors, as shown below.

These colors correspond to the legend that pops up at the left of our screen, as
shown in the next figure.
 There are three black triangles on the left side of this legend. The top and bottom
represent the positive and negative draft that we are measuring (since we picked
“Both sides”). The max/min value is 5/-5 respectively.

The center black triangle represents no draft (0.0), and this corresponds to the lime
green color. On our model, we can see that any surface in this green color has no
draft whatsoever. Any surface that is magenta or blue is at least 5.0 degrees, and
any other colors are between 0 and 5 or 0 and -5.

LESSON SUMMARY
The draft tool is absolutely necessary when working with plastic molded parts (or any
molded parts for that matter). You will need to choose your Draft Hinge wisely to
avoid growing or shrinking the model.

Always perform the basic draft check outlined in this lesson to ensure you have
enough draft on your model.

EXERCISES
Open up your Safety_Key part file that you created back in Lesson 5. Perform a
draft check to make sure you have at least 2 degrees of draft on every surface of the
 model. Add draft where necessary. Assume the pull direction is perpendicular to the
following surface.

Les
son

1
6
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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Hole Feature.
HOLE USAGE
This is another widely underused feature that should be used more often. Many
people use extruded cuts or revolved cuts instead of holes, but many of the straight
holes or even standard holes do not need to be sketched, and that will save time
(both in regeneration and in the user’s time).

There are two main types of holes:

• Straight – The profile is either a plain circle extruded to a certain depth, or
you can sketch a profile that creates a revolved cut.
• Standard – Select from industry sized holes (UNC/UNF, etc.)

Once you pick the type of hole you are going to create, you can place the hole using
one of the following methods.
 • Linear – Hole lies on a plane or planar surface and is located from two
references (similar to a datum point on surface).
• Radial (Cylindrical) – Hole lies on the outside of a cylindrical surface,
measured from a reference that is perpendicular to the cylinder’s axis, and
located about the axis by some angle reference.
• Radial (Axial) – Hole lies on a plane or planar surface, but is located about
an axis normal to that surface. Dimensions are radius or diameter around
axis, and an angle through the axis.
• Coaxial – Hole lies along a datum axis and starts from a specified plane or
planar surface to a desired depth.

CREATING A HOLE FEATURE

The Hole feature is located on the Feature Toolbar in the same group of blue icons
as the round, chamfer, rib, shell and draft, and represents the last of the pick-and-
place features covered in this guide. The icon looks like the following.

To demonstrate the hole functionality, we will open up the Hole_Definition part,

which initially looks like the following.

When you create holes, you generally have four types of placement: Linear, Radial,
Diameter and Coaxial. We will use the next sections to show these different types.

LINEAR HOLE
We will start by clicking on the hole feature, and then we will click on the model in the
location shown below.
A preview of the hole appears on the model, as shown in the next figure. For a linear
placement, there are a number of different drag handles that appear on the hole
feature. They are shown in the figure.

Our dashboard looks like the following.

Depending on the type of hole you are creating, you will see different options in the
dashboard. For a straight hole (circular cross-section along the entire length), the
options represent the following.
For this first linear hole, we will change the diameter to 0.625 and change the depth
option to Through All. Our preview will look like the next figure.

We still have two drag handles that need to be addressed. We will drag the two
handles over to the following references.

Once we do this, we will see two dimensions on the model.

In the dashboard, we will click on the Placement slide-up panel, which looks like the
following.

We can see the two references and the respective dimensions. We can also see a
middle column that defines the relationship to the references. For the FRONT datum
plane row, we will click on the word “Offset” and change the option to Align, and
change the remaining offset dimension to 1.000, as shown below.

This will make the center of the hole line up with the FRONT datum plane, as we can
see on the model preview.
 Now we will click on the green check mark to complete this first hole, which will look
like the following.

COAXIAL HOLE
We are going to create another straight, simple hole. The first thing we are going to
do is turn on the display of axes. Next, we will create a new hole and pick on the axis
A_10 that is going through the large circle on the end.

You will see an outline of the hole that is lined up with the axis that we selected. We
will change the diameter value to 1.0, and the depth to Through All. When we do
this, our preview looks like the following.

The “depth” of the hole seems to have gone to zero – even though it isn’t. The
reason it does this is that there still is not enough information to fully define this hole.
To see what is left, we need to expand the Placement panel, which looks like the
following.

With a coaxial hole, the primary reference is the axis that we picked. The hole knows
it is lined up with the axis, but it doesn’t know where it starts from. This is the
Secondary Reference. Therefore, pick in the Secondary References field, and then
pick on the large, flat, circular surface. The preview now looks like the following.
 Click on the green check mark to complete this hole. The model now looks like the
following.

RADIAL/DIAMETER HOLE
The next hole we create will demonstrate the Radial and/or Diameter placement, but
we will also shake it up a bit and switch from a straight, simple hole to a standard
hole. Therefore, we will start by creating a new hole feature, and then pick on the
following surface.

The hole will initially preview like a Linear placement, as we can see in the following
figure.
Before we start dragging handles, we should open up the Placement panel, and use
the pull-down field at the top right to change from Linear to Radial, as shown in the
next figure.

In the figure above, you can see the four placement options. In this example, we use
Radial, but we could pick on Diameter and the rest of these steps would be identical.
The difference between “Radial” and “Diameter” is how it is dimensioned for the
drawing.

Once you pick on Radial, you must select additional references. Therefore, click into
the Secondary References field to make it active, and then pick on the A_10 axis that
we picked for the last hole. This will create a radius dimension from the axis to the
center of the hole, as shown below.
Change this radius dimension to 0.875, as shown in the above figure. The second
drag handle must be tied to a datum plane or planar surface that either passes
through the A_10 axis, or is parallel to an imaginary plane that would pass through
the axis. Therefore, we will drag the reference handle over to the FRONT datum
plane.

When we do this, an angle will appear on the preview, as we can see in the next
figure.

We will modify this angle dimension to 60.0. The Placement panel will look like the
following.

Now that we have successfully placed this hole, we will change it to a standard hole.
NOTE: You could have selected standard to begin with, but I think it is easier to make
the standard hole once it is fully placed, otherwise, you won’t see the correct shape in
the preview.

Click on the Standard Hole icon in the lower left of the dashboard. This will change
the dashboard to look like the following (with the Shape panel expanded).
For the Thread Type field, we will keep the UNC option. Other options include UNF
and ISO. For the Thread Size field, use the pull-down to select a 10-24 thread. For
the depth option, we will pick on the Through All icon. This will make the Depth
Value disappear.

At the end of the dashboard icons, we will keep the Tapping and Countersink
options selected. Up in the Shape panel, we want to change the depth of the thread
to Thru Thread, so the threaded surface goes along the entire length of the tapped
hole. We will leave the angle and diameter for the countersink alone, but we could
change this if we needed. Our dashboard should now look like the following.

If we look at the preview on the part, we can see the shape and size has updated to
reflect this standard hole. If we had not placed it fully, it would still look like a big
yellow cylinder.
 If we expand the Note panel, we can see the standard not that it creates by default.
We can edit and add to this note. This note can be shown in the drawing to save us
some time re-creating it.

We will now click on the green check mark to complete the hole. The model will look
like the following.

To hide the view of the note on the model, we can go to Tools, Environment and
uncheck the 3D Notes option. Our model will now look like the following.

Save and close this model. We will come back to it in the lesson on Patterns.

SKETCHED HOLES
 The last option we have for the hole feature is a sketched hole. It is created by
starting with a straight hole. In the dashboard, use the first pull-down field to change
from Simple to Sketched. When we do this, the dashboard looks like the following.

The sketch must meet the following requirements:

1. Must have a vertical centerline that acts as the axis of revolution
2. Must only be a half-model of the hole (one side of the centerline)
3. Must be closed

The “vertical” centerline is important to remember. Even if you are making a hole in
the side of a block, where normally you would sketch a horizontal profile, you still
make it vertical in this feature. The following figure shows the correct and incorrect
way to do this.

LESSON SUMMARY
Hole features should be used over extruded or revolved cuts. Placing the hole is
simple and straightforward once you know what you need to select, and you can pick
from standard, industry sizes and take the guesswork out of knowing the exact thread
diameter to use.

As you saw in this lesson, you can mix and match hole placement types and hole
types. But perhaps the biggest benefit to using the hole feature is when you go to
pattern, which we will see in a later lesson.

EXERCISES
Open up the Hole_Exercise.prt part and add the three holes shown on the figure on
the next page.
 Les
son

1
7
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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Shell Feature.
SHELL USAGE
The shell feature is designed to take a solid part, and hollow it out to create a thin-
walled part. Any exposed surface that is not selected to be removed will get a
uniform thickness applied to it.

Some surfaces can be specified with non-default thicknesses if necessary. To

demonstrate the shell feature, we will open the Shell.prt part, which looks like the
following.

If we look at the default cross-section for this part initially, we can see that it is a
complete solid, as shown in the following figure.
 We are going to hollow this part out so water will actually be able to fill it, and pour
from it.
CREATING THE SHELL
To create a shell, click on the following icon in the feature toolbar.

We will instantly see a preview of the shell, and an overall thickness value. Our
thickness might be too large initially to see the preview, which means that if we were
to accept the default thickness, our shell would fail. We will modify the thickness to
0.125, and then we will be able to see our preview, as shown below.
The dashboard for a shell feature looks like the following.

It is pretty simple. We only have a few things to define. In the icon row, we will
define the overall thickness, and the side of the material the thickness is being added
to. We can actually shell outwards if we wanted to.

If we open up the References panel, we will see the following.

Initially, no surfaces will be removed, and there are no “Non-Default Thicknesses”

defined. In other words, if we accept the feature right now, we will have a completely
hollow, but closed part. We will accept it right now to show you what I mean.

After we accept this, we will go to a FRONT view and look at the cross-section
again. We can see that the part is hollow, but we can also see that it is closed the
entire way around the part. So if water were in this part, it would have to have been
poured as it was molded shut.
We will edit the definition of this feature in the model tree to make some changes.
The first change we will make will be while we still have a completely hollow but
closed model. In the References panel, click on the field for Non-Default
Thicknesses, then select the top flat surface of this part, as shown below.

We can see another dimension appear on this part. If we change the thickness for
this surface to 0.5, accept the part, and then look at the cross-sectional view again,
we would see the figure at the top of the next page.
Any external surface can have a non-default thickness as long as it is not tangent to
any other surfaces. Had we had a round at the top of this model where the flat
surface met the side domed surface, then we would not have been able to perform
this operation. Actually, we wouldn’t be able to remove it either.

We will edit the definition once more. Go into the References panel again. In the
Non-Default Thicknesses field, right mouse click on the surface that is listed, and
select Remove. Then, in the Removed Surfaces field, click on the words “No Items”
to activate this field.

Pick the top flat surface, and the surface at the end of the spout to remove them, as
shown in the following figure.

When we accept this part, and shade the model for better clarity, we can see that we
have a hollow part, as shown in the figure at the top of the next page.
 If we were to go back to our cross-section and use the clipping tool (Select Display,
Set Visible, and then select Clip Front, we would see the following.

LESSON SUMMARY
Use the shell tool to hollow out a complex part. The important thing to note is that
you will want to use this feature later in the model, after you have defined all features
that will need to be hollowed out.

If you create a shell early in the part, then you might want to consider using surfaces
instead, and thicken the surfaces later. We will see how to do this in an upcoming
lesson.
 Select surfaces to remove unless you want to design a blow molded part, and select
non-default thicknesses, as long as they are not tangent to other surfaces that must
be at the default thickness.

EXERCISES
Draft1

Open up the Draft1 part that we created, and add a 0.1” round to both the top edge
and the middle edge, as shown below.

Next, hollow out the model, removing the bottom surface with a wall thickness of
0.0625”, as shown below.

If we look at a cross-section through the middle of the part, it looks like the following
figure.

Save and close this model.

Headset

Open up the Headset part file that we created in Lesson 11, and add a Coaxial hole
and Shell feature, as shown in the following figure.

HINT: You may need to create a datum axis first for the coaxial hole.
 Les
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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Rib Feature.
RIB USAGE
The Rib feature is designed to create a thin walled protrusion between two or more
surfaces in the model. The unique behavior of the rib as it can adapt to changing
geometry better than an extrude feature makes is a great, but underused feature.

CREATING THE RIB

The rib feature is located in the Feature Toolbar in the top grouping of blue icons, and
looks like the following.

To demonstrate this feature, we will open up the Draft1 part that we have been
working with. We will create a support/stack rib for this model. Therefore, we will
start by clicking on the Create rib icon. The dashboard appears as follows.

We need to start by sketching our rib profile. In the References slide-up panel, we
can see a Define button. When we click on this, we see the familiar sketching
window.
We will pick the RIGHT datum plane as our sketching plane, and accept the TOP
datum plane facing towards the top. When we get into the sketch, we will pick the
inside elliptical edge as a sketcher reference, as shown in the next figure.

We are going to create the following sketch. NOTE: We will use an ellipse for the arc
portion of this sketch, centered on the vertical reference line, located 0.464” below
the horizontal reference line.
When we complete the sketch, we should see a preview of the rib. If the yellow
arrow is not facing into the rib geometry, we will need to click on it to flip it. The
preview should look like the following.

We will change the rib thickness value to 0.1”. Rotated, our final preview will look
like the following.

Just like the shell feature, we have an icon next to the thickness field that is used to
flip which side of the sketching plane our rib is added. By default, it wants to be
symmetric about the sketching plane (0.05” on each side in this example). You can
flip it to either side as well using this icon.

We will click on the green check mark to complete this feature. Our model looks like
the following.
 Save this model and close it. We will return to this in the lesson on patterns.

LESSON SUMMARY
Use a rib feature when you must add a thin wall between existing surfaces of a
model. This is preferable to extruding a protrusion on both sides of the datum plane,
because the rib feature will follow curving geometry where an extrude just goes
straight out from the sketching plane.

Use Cross-section datum curves when necessary to snap to the geometry at the
location where you want the rib, especially if the geometry is curved.

EXERCISES
Open up the Headset part that we have been working on. We are going to add a rib
within the shelled out area. After we add the rib, we are going to add some rounds to
make it look nice. Use the figure below as a guide for this.
 Les
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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Patterns.

PATTERN USAGE
Patterns are used to replicate a feature (or group of features) multiple times in a
repetitive manner. Patterns can be as simple as three holes with equal spacing in a
row, or one-hundred bumps on a surface to create a non-skid texture.

There are three primary types of patterns. These are:

• Dimensional – You want to pattern an entity in a certain direction. A
dimension is selected that already goes in that direction. You provide the
incremental spacing between entities, and the number of entities that will
result.
• Table – You create a table based on selected driver dimensions. The table
can indicate non-uniform patterns. You can put as much or as little
information into a pattern table as you need.
• Fill – You create a feature, then pattern that feature within a boundary that
you sketch. You can change the shape, spacing, angle and visibility of the
instances in that pattern.

Within a Dimensional pattern, you also have the ability to define one of three
attributes. These are:
• Identical – Each instance is completely identical to the one that is being
patterned. The pattern can not intersect itself or leave the current surface
boundary that the lead entity is located on.
• Varying – You can vary different aspects of the entity, such as depth,
diameter (for a hole), etc. for each instance in an incremental fashion. The
instances are able to leave the current surface boundary, but they can not
intersect themselves.
• General – There are no restrictions on this type, but it takes longer to
regenerate than an identical pattern. If you can’t get an identical or varying
pattern to work, try setting it as a general pattern first. If this does not work,
then there are bigger issues at work.

CREATING PATTERNS
The pattern tool is commonly activated using the right mouse button (either on the
feature itself or on the model tree). You can also get to patterns through the Edit
menu, or using the following icon in the Feature Toolbar.

You must start by picking on a feature to pattern, otherwise the tool is not active. To
demonstrate the pattern tool, we will start with the Hole_Definition part that we
saved from lesson16. It will look like the following.

We created three different holes in this part in lesson 16. The first (Hole 1) was a
linear hole. The second (Hole 2) was a coaxial hole, and the third (Hole 3) was a
radial/diameter hole. The following figure shows these holes.

We will start by clicking on the Hole 1 feature in our model tree (or the hole that
corresponds to “Hole 1” in the previous figure). Once selected, click on the Pattern
tool. The dimensions for the hole feature should appear on the model, as we can see
in the next figure.
The dashboard appears and looks like the following.

By default, most features will assume a dimensional pattern type. This is the
common one in 2001 – which requires you to pick a dimension that drives the first
and second directions. Other pattern types exist in Wildfire 2.0, but we will start with
the standard Dimensional pattern.

Therefore, we start by picking on the dimension that drives the first direction of the
pattern. We will pick on the 1.000 dimension. When we do this, a field appears right
beneath the selected dimension, as we can see in the next figure.

We will use this field to specify the increment between holes. Type in 3.25 and then
hit the <ENTER> key on your keyboard. You should now see little black circles
indicating where the holes will be when completed as shown in the next figure.
If we open up the Dimensions panel, we will see the following.

We can see the dimensions and increment values defined for the first and second
directions. We can also see that we can define the increment by relations. Currently,
we have defined a single driving dimension for direction1, and the spacing is 3.250.
If we go to the Options panel, we can see the three different classifications of
patterns.

We will leave these alone right now. Click on the green check mark to complete this
pattern, and you will see the following.

Next, we are going to create a radial pattern using Hole 3. For this pattern, we will
use a reference instead of an actual dimension to drive the pattern. Therefore, start
by picking on the hole in the model tree and then click on the pattern tool. We can
see the dimensions show up in the next figure.
We could select on the 60.000 dimension to drive the angle, but we will demonstrate
a different type of pattern, called Axis. In the dashboard, use the first pull-down field
to change the option from Dimension to Axis, as we can see in the next figure.

Once we select Axis, we must select a datum axis or edge that will act as the pattern
reference. We will turn on our datum axes and select the A_10 axis. Once we do
this, we can see a different look on the model.

There are now two arrows, one for the first direction (maroon arrow labeled “1”) and
one for the second direction (yellow arrow labeled “2”), as we can see in the figure
above. We can also see the default increment is currently 90.000 degrees, and there
are four black dots representing four holes.

In the dashboard, we can see the following.

 There is still a section for first direction and second direction. We will change the
total number of instances from 4 to 3, and the angle from 90.000 to 120.000, as
shown below.

This change is also reflected on the model itself.

We will now click on the green check mark to complete this hole pattern. Our model
will now look like the following.

Save and close this model.

FILL PATTERN
The next pattern type that will discuss is the Fill pattern. This is new in Wildfire, and
offers a huge benefit to users that create very large identical patterns that fill in a grid
on a model. For example, suppose you are creating a non-skid surface with all of the
little diamond shape bumps on it. This would be one way of doing that.

The advantage of a fill pattern over an identical dimensional pattern is the fact that
you don’t have to stay within a rectangular grid, and the second is that the lead
feature doesn’t have to have any dimensions associated with it, nor do you have to
even keep the lead pattern.

To demonstrate this pattern type, we will open up the model entitled Boat. It will
initially look like the following.
This is a bath mat, and requires suction cups along the bottom to prevent it from
sliding. If we turn the model around, we can see one of these suction cups that we
created.

If we zoom in close on this model, we can also see a sketch feature. This sketch
feature defines the area that is going to be filled. We can either use a sketch feature
(as we are in this example), or we can sketch a shape once we get into the pattern
itself.
If we look at the model tree, we can see that we created the suction cup as a revolve
feature, and we used an “on-the-fly” datum plane, which caused the features to be
grouped together.

With a regular dimensional pattern, this would be necessary to include the offset
dimension for the plane to be tied to the feature being patterned. In a fill pattern,
however, we don’t need the datum plane at all. We could even ungroup this current
group and pattern the revolve feature all by itself.

Instead, we will simply pick on the Revolve 1 feature in the model tree and then click
on the pattern tool. When the dashboard appears, switch the pattern type to Fill, as
shown in the next figure.
When we do this, the dashboard will change to look like the following.

We must start by defining the fill boundary. If we needed to sketch a boundary, we

could right click in the working window and use the Define Internal Sketch option.
Instead, we will pick on the sketch feature on the model.

NOTE: If you are going to use a pre-defined sketch (as we are in this example), it
must come before the feature being patterned in the model tree. This is because the
model is rolled back to the time just before the feature was created for the pattern.

When we pick on the sketch feature, we will see the following in the model. Go to a
BOTTOM view for the rest of this example.

A grid of black circles appears on the model. This is the preview for the pattern. In
the dashboard, we have a variety of options to chose from for defining the shape of
this pattern. The first field to the right of the sketch definition is the shape of the
pattern. The default is Square, which gives you the effect above. There are other
shapes, such as Triangle, Diamond, Circle, Spiral, Curve, etc. that give you different
results. Try each one until you find the one you want.

In our example, we are going to stay with the Square option. The next field to the
right is the spacing between instances. We are going to change this value to 0.750.
The next field is the distance from the boundary that we sketched/selected. We will
use a value of 0.300 for this fill. The last field is used to rotate the entire grid about
the lead instance. We will use a value of 57.000 degrees to line the suction cups up
with the long angled edge.

The dashboard, when completed will look like the following.

 The preview of the pattern will look like the next figure.

If we wanted to remove one or more of the instances from the resulting pattern, we
would click on the black circle and turn it white. We, however, are going to keep
each of these instances.

When we click on the green check mark, each of the instances will regenerate, and
then we will be left with our final pattern, as shown in the next figure.

Save and close this model.

TABLE PATTERNS
The next pattern type that we will look at is the Table Pattern option. We will
demonstrate this functionality with the Plate3 model, which looks like the following.
We are going to start by picking on the hole and then select the pattern tool. When
the dashboard appears, change the pattern type from Dimension to Table, as shown
in the next figure.

When we do this, the dashboard will look like the following.

The first thing we must do is select any dimension we want to control in the table. I
find it best to pick them in the order you want to see them in the columns of the
table. Therefore, we will pick the 0.625 “x” dimension, followed by the 0.750 “y”
dimension, and lastly the 0.750 diameter dimension.

Once all three dimensions are selected, we will click on the Edit button next to the
“TABLE1” field. This brings up the table editor, which will look like the following.

We can see four columns. The first is used to identify the hole by a unique
incrementing number. The first hole that we selected represents “1”, therefore, we
will start with “2” in the second row.
The remaining columns are our three dimensions that we selected, in the order in
which we selected them.

I always find it easier to sketch out the hole pattern on paper prior to filling out the
table to make it easier to fill out. My sketch for this hole pattern might look like the
following.

Using this information, I will fill out the table as follows.

Once the table is filled out, I will select File, Exit from the menu at the top of this
window. This saves and exits the table. Back in the model, we will see the preview
of this pattern, which looks like the following.
 At this time, we could create more than one pattern table for this hole. The reason
you might do this would be for different family table instances, or to try out different
patterns until you know which one will work for you.

We will click on the green check mark to complete this pattern. Our final model will
look like the following.

Save this model for the next pattern type.

REFERENCE PATTERNING
A reference pattern is a feature pattern that follows an existing pattern. In order to
make this work, the feature you are trying to pattern must be tied to the lead feature
of the existing pattern in such a way that it could be translated to each of the
instances of that pattern.

To demonstrate how this works in Wildfire 2.0, we will continue to work with the
Plate3 model that we have open. We are going to add two features that will both be
referenced patterned. The first will be an extruded thin protrusion. Start by going to
the extrude feature, and be sure to select the solid and thin material options, as
shown below.

Change the wall thickness to 0.125, as we can see in the above figure. Next, use
your right mouse button to Define Internal Sketch. For the sketching plane, use the
top surface of the plate, and accept the RIGHT datum plane facing towards the
Right. Inside the sketch, use the “Use Edge” tool to select both halves of the lead
hole (the one in the lower left corner), as shown in the next figure.
Once we complete the sketch, be sure to flip the material side to the outside of the
hole, and change the depth to 0.25. The preview will look like the following.

Click on the green check mark to complete this feature, which looks like the following.

Now, select the extrude feature and then click on the pattern tool. Since this feature
is already tied to the lead hole in the hole pattern, the default type listed is
Reference, as shown in the next figure.
Click on the green check mark to complete this pattern, and our model will update as
shown in the following figure.

Notice that the diameter was controlled by the hole pattern, so it got bigger around
the center hole as it should.

The next feature will be a round at the base of the extrude feature on the lead hole.
The radius will be 0.05, as shown below.

Once you finish this round, select it in the model tree and click on the pattern tool.
This time, the dashboard will not open. Instead, it will automatically pattern the round
to all of the instances.

Rounds and Chamfers do this automatically. The following figure shows the resulting
model once the reference pattern is done.
LESSON SUMMARY
Patterns are great tools to reduce the amount of repetitive work you might incur
otherwise. You need to build in the proper dimensioning scheme so you have
dimensions available to drive pattern directions, sizes, etc.

In dimensional patterns, you define the instance spacing and number of instances. In
table-driven patterns, you spell out exactly the location and size based off of
references that the lead entity used. In a fill pattern, you sketch a boundary that the
fill resides within, and then you indicate size, shape and orientation.

To successfully group or reference pattern, all entities must be tied only to the lead
feature being patterned first (or first in the group). If they reference stationary, non-
moving references, the pattern will fail.

EXERCISES
Open up the Headset part that we have worked with in the past, and pattern the rib
and all of its rounds, as shown below. The spacing for the ribs is 1.25 inches.
HINT: Since we have not learned how to create a group by combining already
created features, you will not be creating one for this exercise. You will, however
need to find out which feature drives the 1.25 spacing dimension and pattern that
first.
Cup_Washer

Create the part below.

 Les
son

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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Variable Section Sweeps.
VARIABLE SECTION SWEEP DEFINITION
A variable section sweep is an advanced sweep feature that, instead of maintaining a
constant section shape and size along the length of the trajectory, is varying along
the trajectory by specifying additional trajectories that push or pull the section as it
goes.

CREATING A VSS (Variable Section)

To demonstrate this functionality, we will open up the Variable_Section1.prt file,
which initially looks like the following.

In this example, we are going to create a cut out of the block that is rectangular in
shape, but changes size according to the datum curves/sketches that are on the
model.

To create a variable section sweep, click on the following icon in the Feature Toolbar.
This will open up the variable section sweep tool, and its dashboard looks like the
following (with the References panel open).

By default, variable section sweeps start out as surfaces. Therefore, we will need to
first click on the Solid icon (first icon in the dashboard). Once we pick on this option,
select the Remove Material icon. Our dashboard should now look like the following.

We are now ready to start selecting our trajectories. One of the big differences in
Wildfire 2.0 is that we don’t have to specify whether it is a curve or an edge chain.
We can simply pick on the reference, and it will be smart enough to know whether it
is valid or not.

We will begin by picking on the origin trajectory. The first trajectory that we pick in a
VSS feature is always treated as the origin. The best trajectory in our model to use
as the origin trajectory is the dark blue straight curve on the top of the block.
Therefore, we will pick on it. The model will highlight the curve, as shown.
There is a label on the curve that identifies it as the “Origin”. In addition, there are
two dimensions and two yellow arrows. The two dimensions can be used to extend
or shorten the trajectory for our origin even if the selected trajectory is longer/shorter.
It does not change the length of the original curve, only the origin trajectory in this
feature.

The yellow arrow that is pointing down the trajectory is the start point. If we were to
click on it, we could change the start point to the other end of the trajectory.

The second yellow arrow is used to identify the Horizontal/Vertical orientation when
no other trajectories are specified as the “X-Trajectory”. In a regular sweep feature,
this would be used to help orient the sketch, as there is only one trajectory.

Our References panel looks like the following.

We can see our Origin trajectory listed, and there is a check in the box in the “N”
column, indicating that our section, when swept, will be normal to this trajectory. We
could change the section plane control to Normal to Projection or Constant Normal
Direction using the first pull-down field, entitled “Section Plane Control”.

We will now start to pick our other trajectories. The order doesn’t matter once you
select your origin, but for consistency, we will pick the next curve shown below as our
second trajectory. Be sure to hold down the Ctrl key when picking this second
trajectory – otherwise, you will re-select the “Origin”.
We can see that this trajectory is labeled “Chain 1”, and since it is currently active in
the reference window, we can see the two dimensions used to extend/shorten it.

We will now hold down the Ctrl key again, and select our third trajectory, shown
below.

This trajectory is now labeled “Chain 2”. Hold down the Ctrl key once again, and
select our fourth trajectory, shown in the next figure.
It is labeled “Chain 3”. We now have all of our necessary trajectories. Our
References panel looks like the following.

We can see all four trajectories listed with their labels. We can also see a column
entitled “X”. This column allows us to specify a trajectory from our list to act as our
“X-Trajectory”. We will click in the check box for “Chain 2”, so it looks like the
following.

When the check mark appears, you will notice that our Horizontal/Vertical control field
has changed to X-Trajectory. This allows the application to automatically line up the
Origin and the Chain 2 start points on the same horizontal when inside sketch mode.

We are now ready to create our section. Therefore, we will click on the pencil and
paper icon in the dashboard (just to the left of the “Remove Material” icon). This
brings us into our sketch, which initially looks like the following.
The figure above illustrates the location of the different start points for these
trajectories, based on the start point for the origin. It is upside down from how we
were looking at it before, but that is okay, because we can always rotate the sketch to
see how we are looking at it.

We are going to sketch a rectangle that has corners that touch the end of “Chain 1”
and “Chain 2”, and is controlled by the Chain 3 for its height, as shown in the next
figure.

If we go back to a rotated view, we can see exactly where our section sits with
respect to the trajectories.
 When we click on the check mark to complete the sketch, we will see the profile of
our VSS feature, as shown below.

The downward arrow in this preview indicates the material removal side. We will
click on the green check mark to complete our feature. Our model now looks like the
following.

CREATING A VSS (Constant Section)

In this next section, we are going to see how to create a regular sweep using the
Variable Section Sweep feature. To demonstrate this, open up the
Variable_Section2 part, which looks like the following.
We are going to cut out a special lip around the front top edge of this part, but we
only want it to be a certain location. Therefore, we will start by going into our variable
section sweep tool. Make sure that you select the Solid and Remove Material
options from the dashboard, as shown below.

Next, pick on the front, top edge so it highlights as shown in the next figure.

At the two ends of the highlighted edge, we can see the T=0.000 dimensions that
allow us to extend or shorten the length of our trajectory. We will shorten the
trajectory by 2” on each end, therefore, we will double-click on the 0.000 dimension,
and change it to -2.0 for each end.

The result is shown in the following figure.

Next, we will go to the dashboard and pick on the Options slide-up panel, and select
Constant Section, as shown in the next figure.

We actually may not need to do this to get our final result, but I would get in the habit,
because there may be a time down the road where this feature could fail, because it
may be looking for more than one trajectory (Variable section option), and we only
want a single trajectory (Constant section option).

Now, we will click on the sketch icon, and when we are placed into sketcher, we will
see the following.

The intersecting dashed lines represent the start of our trajectory (where the yellow
arrow was). If you are not sure how you are looking at the part, you can rotate it, and
then return to the sketch view after that.

We will sketch four lines and dimension as shown.

When we finish our sketch, and rotate our model, we can see the dynamic preview
(another advantage of using a VSS over a regular sweep, which currently does not
have a dynamic preview).

The completed model looks like the next figure.

 Had we needed more control over the end points of the trajectory, we would need to
use the regular sweep feature and sketch our trajectory on top of the existing model
edges. The following figure shows an example of a case where a variable section
sweep would have to be combined with additional features to accomplish what a
regular sweep would do.

LESSON SUMMARY
The variable section sweep is a very powerful tool to take a standard swept type
feature, and stretch and pull it in different directions by defining datum curves that the
section will ride along.

Be sure to create your datum curves ahead of time. If you happened to forget one,
you could pause the feature and create one on the fly.

Use the variable section sweep for regular swept features if you don’t need to add
inner faces

EXERCISES
Open up the basket part in our ProETrain folder. It should look like the following.
We want to create a surface variable section sweep at the top of the existing surface
as shown below.

The section for the rim profile is a semicircle that is normal to the top rim of the
existing surface as it goes around.
 Les
son

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Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about Swept Blends.

SWEPT BLEND USAGE
A swept blend is used when you must blend together several sections, but the path
that the blend takes must follow a specific trajectory. It is sort of a combination
between a general blend and a sweep feature.

Unlike a variable section sweep, you can only use one trajectory, but you can vary
the shape of the sections drastically along the trajectory, which you can not do with a
variable section sweep.

To demonstrate this, we will create the following swept blend protrusion.

We will open up the Swept_Blend.prt part file in our ProETrain directory. It will
initially look like the following.
 The trajectory will be the long, open ended sketched curve, and the three sections
that we are gong to blend are indicated in the order in which we will pick them.

Like the General Blend, it is easier to select your trajectory and sections, although
you have the ability to sketch them. For this lesson, we will select the entities.

CREATING THE SWEPT BLEND

There is no icon on the feature toolbar for this tool, and like a regular sweep feature,
you have to decide ahead of time what type of material condition are you creating
(Protrusion, Cut, Surface, etc.).

We will use Insert, Swept Blend, Protrusion from the menu bar, as shown below.
This brings up the following menu.

At the top of this menu, we will define how we are going to create the sections. By
default, the option Sketch Sec is selected. We have already selected Select Sec in
the figure above. This means that when we come to defining sections, we are going
to select them instead of sketching them.

The options at the bottom are similar to the ones we have seen in the variable
section sweep. These are:
• NrmToOriginTraj – Normal to origin trajectory. We will only pick one
trajectory with this option, which acts as the origin.
• Pivot Dir – Pivot Direction. Choose a datum plane or planar surface that the
sections will be perpendicular to along the length of the trajectory.
• Norm To Traj – Normal to Trajectory. In this option, you actually will pick
two trajectories, but the sections don’t follow both. One of the trajectories will
be the one that the sections follow, while the other one determines
perpendicularity of the sections.

We are going to keep the first option by default, and then select Done. This will bring
up the Swept Blend window, as shown below.

We can see that we are defining the origin trajectory. We have the following menu
options that appear.
To sketch a trajectory, you would use the Sketch Traj option. We, however, want to
select an existing curve or edge as the trajectory; therefore we will pick on the Select
Traj option. This will bring up a menu giving us options for how to select the
trajectory. We want to select the Curve Chain option, since we are picking on a
sketched datum curve.

We will then select on the straight portion of the trajectory, shown with the bold red
highlight in the figure below. When we do this, one of the ends of the trajectory will
have a bold, blue arrow, indicating the start point.

We want to start at the other end, so we will click on Start Point from the menu. A
smaller menu appears with the options Next and Accept. We want to click on Next,
which will cause the vertex at the other end of the curve to highlight. We will then
click on Accept to move the start point to this end, as shown below.
With the start point in the right spot, we will click on Done to move forward. We are
now placed into a menu to select our sections.

We will keep the default option of Pick Curve selected, but at the bottom, we want to
select Sel Loop, which will let us pick the entire closed loop of curve segments that
make up the section. We will then pick on the bottom edge of the first section. When
we do this, the entire first curve highlights, and a start point arrow appears.

As in all other blends that we have talked about, we want to make sure the start point
is in the same location on all of the sections. There is a point on each of the sections
that never changes, and that is the one that lies on the trajectory. Therefore, we
want our start point to look like the figure below.

Once it looks like the figure above, click on Done. We see the same menu again,
and we want to pick the same options. This time, we will pick on the bottom edge of
the second section, and make sure our start point arrow is on the point that lies on
the trajectory, as shown below.
Click on Done for this section once it looks like the figure above. In the message
window, we are asked if we want to continue selecting sections. We will enter Y. For
the third section, we will still use the Sel Loop, and we will pick on the flat edge.
When we do this, the start point shows up on the following vertex.

We want to switch the start point to be on the other end of this edge, so it lies on the
trajectory. Therefore, we select Start Point from the menu, and then pick on the
opposite vertex for this straight segment. It will now look like the following.

BLEND VERTEX

If you look at the first two sections, there are four entities that make up these. There
is a straight edge on the bottom, two edges on the sides, and an arc at the top. This
third section only has two entities, the straight edge at the bottom and the arc at the
top.

We must have the same number of entities for this to work, so we will create two
blend vertices. A Blend Vertex is a selected vertex on the section that will force two
vertices from the previous section to blend into this one. Since we are eliminating the
 two side edges from the third section, we need to have the vertices from these edges
in section two blend into a single vertex in section three.

So, we will pick Blend Vertex from the menu, and select the two endpoints of the
straight segment. When we do this, a large circle appears around the vertex, as
shown below.

Once we have done this, click on Done. At the prompt to create additional sections,
type in N. We can now click on OK to complete this feature, as shown below.

There were two other options in the Swept Blend window. These were.
• Blend Control – Specify how the blend will be controlled. You can create
an area graph specifying the exact smoothness of the blend. You can also
ask it to create more of a linear blend. The default blending method usually
gives good results, so we didn’t have to define other options.
• Tangency – If you have existing geometry at the ends of the trajectory, you
can specify whether the swept blend should be tangent to these entities.
This is very useful if doing this as a surface feature. Since we don’t have any
other features in this model, we don’t need to define this option.

LESSON SUMMARY
A swept blend is a great tool to use if you must blend together multiple sections, and
control the shape between the sections by a trajectory.

You can select or sketch the sections and trajectory, but it is often easier to select.

Remember to check your start points and number of entities. Create blend vertices
where necessary.

EXERCISES
Open up the Swept_Blend2.prt part file, and create a swept blend cut around the
bottom rim of the part, as shown below. Use the outside edge as the trajectory, and
use the existing datum curves as the sections.

Les
son

2
2
0
Lesson Objective: In this lesson, we will learn about the Boundary Blended
Surface tool.

BOUNDARY BLEND SURFACE USAGE

None of the tools that we have used so far would help you take boundary curves to
define a surface, and internal curves to control the shape across the boundaries.
This is what a boundary blended surface is all about.

To demonstrate this, we will open up the following part (Boundary1.prt)

 We are going to create a new surface by blending the outside curves together, but
using the internal curves to define the shape.

DIRECTION CURVES

When you define boundary blend surfaces, you define curves or edges in one or two
directions. It doesn’t matter what you consider the first or second direction, as long
as you keep track of it yourself.

In our example, we are going to consider the following directions, and curves in those
directions.

CREATING THE SURFACE

To create a Boundary Blended Surface, click on the following icon in the feature
toolbar.
The dashboard for this feature looks like the following figure. The fields at the bottom
are not labeled, but they are used to pick curves in the first, second and approximate
directions.

The first direction curve field is currently highlighted in yellow, meaning that it is
active. We will select the first and third curve in the first direction, as shown below.
NOTE: Use the Ctrl key to select both of these.

Once we select these, the first field at the bottom will say 2 Chains. We can see a
plane highlighted, and we can also see two circles with little symbols in them. We will
discuss what these mean a little later.

Now, we will click in the second direction field, and select the first and third curves in
this direction, as shown in the figure at the top of the next.
If we look at a full preview, and rotate the model, we can see that our surface does
not intersect the two curves in the middle of the part, as shown below.

Click on the full preview button again to return to the feature definition. We are going
to pick on the Curves slide-up panel. It will look like the following.

As you can tell, this panel is used to define the first and second direction curves.
Currently, we are active in the second direction, so we will pick in the first field to
activate first direction curves. We are going to hold down the Ctrl key and pick on the
second curve in the first direction. It will appear in this panel as the third chain on the
list.
On the model, the dynamic preview has disappeared, because it can not build the
surface in the order the curves were picked. We need to move the new curve to the
middle of the list so it acts as if we picked it second instead of last. To do this, we will
select on the 3 Chain item so it becomes highlighted, then select the up arrow that
appears, as shown below.

As soon as we do this, the dynamic preview appears again, as shown below.

Now, repeat this process for the second direction curves. We are going to hold down
the Ctrl key and select the middle curve in the second direction, then repeat the
process of moving it up the list so it becomes the second curve listed. When we do
this, we can see the preview for the final surface, shown at the top of the next page.
 We will now accept this surface, and it will look like the following.

If you rotate the model, you will find that it goes through all of the curves.

EDGE ALIGNMENT AND ADVANCED OPTIONS

One of the more common options you will adjust in boundary blended surfaces is
edge alignment (boundary conditions) and advanced options (edge influence). To
demonstrate this, open up the Boundary2.prt part file. It will look like the following.
Constraints

If you recall from the last section, on each selected boundary curve, there is a white
circle with markings in it. These circles are used to identify and define the boundary
conditions (constraints) that exist. There are four possible constraints to choose
from. They are shown in the following figure.

When selecting constraints, you should be aware which surface(s) is being

referenced, as it will determine whether the condition can be satisfied.

In our current model, we are going to create a surface that will connect these two
sides and then adjust boundary conditions to get the final result. To do this, we will
go back into our boundary blended surface. For the first direction curves, we will pick
the top edges of each side, as shown below.