Parent-child relationship

[Jacoolo]

Can You guide me through search menu to set it up in the way to find all feats which are unneeded(they are no parents!)?

 

[design-engine]

there are several ways. I like this one.... al

The visual way: highlight the feature ... hit delete. (the intention is not to delete the feature but see the reference children) The children will be highlighted.

 

[jeff4136]

For each feature a model.inf file lists
FEATURE NUMBER
INTERNAL FEATURE ID
PARENTS = (if exist)
CHILDREN = (if exist)


You can F3 thru a lengthly file in a text editor
in short order watching for the absence of the
child list and jotting down F#'s or ...?

 

[Shawzie9]

Just like the delete method, you can choose suppress as well. This may be safer in the case where you have an itchy trigger finger...


Edited to add: Another method is to highlight the feature in question and drag it up the model tree. The mouse icon should change, as ProE will not allow you to drag a child above a parent...
Edited by: Shawzie9

 

[Jacoolo]

nice, very nice, guys, what am I supposed to do with software from XXI century - pick manually each of 1000 feats to find out if it is a parent? LOL!

I do not belive there is no automate way to get quick and clear report of all unneeded features. It has to be one!

jeff tricks seems to be most able to automate, but out of Pro\E though

 

[jeff4136]

Yeah, writing a simple report generating routine would
take a few minutes unless, like me, it would take hours
just to get back to "hello world". All the dependancy
branch ends would still have to be identified(?) but it
would narrow the field a lot. If someone writes it,
I'll use it. ;^)


I ~thought~ I'd seen a "has children" expression for one
of the conditional Search functions but, look as I might,
could not find it.


ModelCheck does have a CHILDREN_EXIST check option but I'm
guessing it takes a list of feature types and issues a warning
if you hang a child on that type feature. (Help / Model
Analysis / ModelCHECK / Setting Up the Check Config File/
Part Mode Checks; if you want to look.)


I'm sympathetic but don't consider this to be a major rant issue.
For perspective , and for the benefit of their marketing interns
posting here, I could name a comparably priced program that is
supposed to be a "competitor". It gives you no dependancy query
functions or information. None, nada, zip. The main reason it's
still on the market, IMO, is because its target customer, a non-
parametric drafting software user upgrading to parametric modeling,
doesn't know what a dependancy is ... yet. Well, actually; it's
not still on the market. You now have to buy it bundled with the
non-parametric drafting software.

 

[dgs]

Well, I think that's a little unfair. A built in list of non-parent features isn't as useful as it would seem. Useful for you right now, but not universally so.


While I understand what you're after, cleaning up a model of unnecessary stuff, you are still going to have to look at each feature to see if it's needed or not. You'll have a lot of features without children like rounds, draft or section cutting planes that are still necessary in the model, so once you have a list you'll still have to touch them all anyway.


Seems like using Jeff's method can easily get you a list so you won't have to touch every feature just to see if it has children.

 

[dr_gallup]

Most of my features don't have children as I try to minimize dependencies. Doesn't mean i want to delete them!

 

[Jacoolo]

thx for attention



this situation happens to me often lately - I run with some crazy model
and finish with dozen of features which, with most of them I do not
remember why have I created them?))



...and then I whish I would have some fine tool to find all of this rubusih elements that mess with my model tree))



I understand that such feats could be desired in horizontal modeling where minimizing dependecies is a goal, or it is ordinary situation for guys from Catia where they can isolate any feat to "kill" the relationship.

In this particular case I work with surface models, and it happens often I tried to many ways untill I found the right ones. The job is done with many unneeded feats in legacy.

 

[PRStockhausen]

One thing to remember is that some features that have not children do serve a purpose, i.e. a datum used for a crosssection. (I try to rename these, but do forget at times.) Ora dimension in the featuremay be used in a relation. Be sure to backup the part before removing features in a model you are not familiar with.

 

[dross]

Have you tried using the Global Reference Viewer?


It has filters available.

 

[Shawzie9]

nice, very nice, guys, what am I supposed to do with software from XXI century - pick manually each of 1000 feats to find out if it is a parent? LOL!

You should be fully aware of your references as you create new features, this is called design intent. It seems to me now that you are asking for the software to check your design intent, is this correct?


If this is is true, and thesoftware had the capability to double check your design intent, then you, my friend, could be replaced with a mapkey. Am I overanalyzing this?

 

[Jacoolo]

unfortunately I am not equiped with AAX yet



no money no fun

In my last job where I had all accessable license(AAX, ISDX, BMX, CNC,
Casting, Plastic Advisor, Pro\M, DMX), there was no time to play with
it, now I can afford myself sometimes for an an hour,or two to play
with new stuff - there is none.



Funny, isn`t it?

to Shawzie

no, I am not interested in external software, just Pro\E. This question - search for unneeded feats - came to me when I realized how much time I spent on finding feats without children and parents, to get rid of mess in my model tree

 

[Shawzie9]

I can appreciate your strive for excellence in modeling... perhaps my models are not as geometry intensive as yours, but I don't find myself doing relationship searches in bulk that often.


Perhaps with castings or molds, where features can be very numerous - and the feature tree does not necessarily represent fabrication chronology, I use datum features as often as possible, and no matter when they are created, they are immediately dragged to the top of the tree, renamed, and organized by feature type. Grouping is a big help too. This methodology makes parent-child relationships very easy to manage - and perhaps situations which you describe can be minimized or possible avoided.