I understand the principles of Top Down Design theory, and tend to follow them in my own designs. However, for all the discussion about the theory, I haven't been able to find any specific information about how to lay out a Pro/E project to follow the principles.
I reviewed the tutorial that was posted in this thread, but it doesn't really do anything special besides controlling external references and assigning a few dimensions with relations. I can't imagine that's all there is to it.
What I would expect to do is create a part or assembly (skeleton perhaps?) that contains planes, axes, and sketches representing key geometry in the design, then each part and sub-assembly would only reference that geometry. Is this a reasonable approach or are there better ways?
There is also a question of how to lay out the project to do this.
For example, how do the components reference the geometry from top level? If I just work in the assembly and activate the component I want to work on, I can reference the geometry directly, but that means afterwards I can't work with the component without the assembly. It is also possible to copy the geometry into the component (Insert -> Shared Data), but this creates a single item in the feature tree called "Extern Copy Geom", which is not very convenient to work with.
What purpose do skeleton models serve? I understand what they should be logically, but not how they are any different than normal Pro/E parts.
By the way, I'm using Pro/E WF2, and while I've spent a fair bit of time using the program and learning what I can from books and the internet, I have no formal training with it.
I reviewed the tutorial that was posted in this thread, but it doesn't really do anything special besides controlling external references and assigning a few dimensions with relations. I can't imagine that's all there is to it.
What I would expect to do is create a part or assembly (skeleton perhaps?) that contains planes, axes, and sketches representing key geometry in the design, then each part and sub-assembly would only reference that geometry. Is this a reasonable approach or are there better ways?
There is also a question of how to lay out the project to do this.
For example, how do the components reference the geometry from top level? If I just work in the assembly and activate the component I want to work on, I can reference the geometry directly, but that means afterwards I can't work with the component without the assembly. It is also possible to copy the geometry into the component (Insert -> Shared Data), but this creates a single item in the feature tree called "Extern Copy Geom", which is not very convenient to work with.
What purpose do skeleton models serve? I understand what they should be logically, but not how they are any different than normal Pro/E parts.
By the way, I'm using Pro/E WF2, and while I've spent a fair bit of time using the program and learning what I can from books and the internet, I have no formal training with it.