| New Hidden Relations Editor
Take a preview test drive of the new Pro/Engineer relations editor. It's buried in Pro/E 2001. Apparently
it was not ready for release from a QA perspective, so they didn't publish the config.pro option to turn it
on. Congratulations to those who fought the battle to keep the bugs inside on this one!
As with the rest of Pro/E, the relations editor is getting a UI upgrade. The concept is to make it a
graphical interchange rather than a symbolic text editing exercise. With the new interface a user can select
symbols from the screen to create and edit relation equations. This should make writing and editing relations
easier because you won't have to write all the symbols down in advance.
To try it, just enter this line in your config.pro:
new_relation_ui yes
An example of the user interface is shown in Figure 1. You're on your own to figure out how it
works, but a little experimentation will get you on your way. Just remember they didn't advertise this new
functionality because it wasn't ready -- so be aware of bugs.
Figure 1 - The new 2001 (Hidden) Relations UI
Another cool feature is the parameter editor. You can edit parameters right in the relations editor.
Just pick on the Local Parameters blue bar.
A few things I've noticed that need some attention (my ignorance may be showing) include:
- It could use a function to show dimensions while in the editor as before. I tried several ways, but have
always had to Modify the features before starting the relations editor so the dims were on the screen to see
and pick.
- To select dims from the screen, you must pick the
icon. Once you select a dim and you want to select another, you have to pick the icon again. If you do
this very much, it's really tedious. Perhaps it could be made to stay in the "Dim Select" mode for all picks
outside the relations editor window?.?
- There doesn't appear to be a "comment" command so you still need to know the syntax for that.
- Be careful with the Sort command. I can't figure out what it does ... exactly ... but it doesn't
Undo and it jumbles the order of the relations. Also, even with Cancel the changes are saved.
Give PTC the benefit of the doubt that these are issues they are still working on.
I'm just really excited that they held it back to keep working on it before forcing it on us!!
Thank You!
By the way, You may also note that the new UI is not applicable for all areas of Pro. Drawing mode for
instance does not use the new relations editor. My understanding is that it will when the official release happens.
Happy New Year from all of us at Synthesis Engineering!
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