Here's an old technique which I always like to bring up because there are always new users on Pro/ENGINEER or we tend to forget some of the techniques we learned so long ago.

Let's say I want to send my file over the wire to either a supplier, contractor, etc. and looking at my file manager it shows that my part file is 25,098KB!!  And as I look at my telephone dial-up connection, I feel a deep pain in my chest.  Well, let's zip it up.  The zipped file then becomes 8,641KB.  A little better but it would still take some time.  What should I do?  GET A T-1 LINE.

In the meantime, here's a nice clean way of making your file sizes much smaller for transfer.  Rather than compressing my file using my file manager utilities, let's keep it neat and do it w/in Pro/ENGINEER.  So for our 25,098KB example I can go under:

Feature --> Suppress --> Clip

and then select the very first feature.

Once all these features have been suppressed, save your model again.  In my example the file size drastically reduced to 6,645KB.  An incredible 74% file size reduction.  And then let's zip this file up and this file then became only ~2MB.  A total of 91% file size reduction!

How's that for file size improvement?  Keep in mind that the person you are sending the file to needs to have Pro/ENGINEER so that once they retrieve and unzip the file, they can proceed to open the model in Pro/ENGINEER and:

Feature --> Resume -->  Last Set

and have all the features brought back into the model.  Make sure that you only select Last Set as opposed to All because Last Set only undos the last suppression made.  If you select All, then every feature that is suppressed will be resumed and you might have failures or difficulties w/ the model.

Please note that file size results may vary.
 
 

To create a construction circle w/ Intent Manager turned on, sketch your circle.  Then hold down your right mouse button (RMB) and select Toggle Construction.
 
 

While being linked to a Workspace, and depending on your config.pro settings, when you wish to Investigate while in Resolve Mode you might not be able to retrieve your backup model for this operation.  Simply add/change the following config.pro option regen_backup_using_disk and set it to yes.  This will allow a back-up model to brought up in Resolve mode while being linked to a workspace.
 
 

Depending on the power of your graphics card, sometimes spinning/viewing your model on your screen can be slow or even very jerky.  Or maybe you want to set certain viewing behaviors while looking at your designs.  Pro/ENGINEER provides a set of options you can use to help increase the viewing performance of your models, assemblies and even drawings on your screen.

From the top pull-down menu, select

View --> Performance...

You will be presented w/ options & settings for 3 different areas of:
 

• Hidden Line Removal
• Fast HLR enables you to show your model in Hidden Line Removal mode while spinning.  By default, if you are showing Hidden Line, when you begin to spin your model, it becomes wire-frame for quicker performance while spinning.  If you need to see the hidden lines while spinning check this option.  Granted it will be slower but you get real-time visual feedback of all hidden lines for better visualization based on your orientation while rotating.
• Fast HLR for Drawings allows the same to be done for drawings with views supporting hidden lines.

• Frame rate while spinning
• Enabled allows you to specify the number of frames per second (1 - 10) for spinning, not panning or zooming.  This attempts to guarantee the time it takes to draw a frame.  For instance setting the minimum number of displays per second while spinning to 10 will increase the rotation performance by making sure it can show 10 frames per second.  In order to do so it will remove any information that will hinder your specification.  So for an assembly whole parts/subassemblies might not even be shown on the screen while your are spinning.  They will then be brought back once you stop the rotation.

• Level of Detail
• Enabled allows you to specify the levels of detail (LOD) for shaded models during pan, zoom and spin.  This will let you control the percentage amount of information to be shown.  As you pan, zoom or spin, the models themselves will become faceted to accomodate the value you've specfied to improve the perfomance on the screen.  You control the amount of detail that still shows on the model(s) by specifying the Show Detail % value.  The quickest will be 1% as everything becomes simple blocks while you pan, zoom or spin.  Once you finish all the detail will then be resumed.

So avoid the jerkiness of shaded displays by toggling this option and specifying a value of say 50% (default value).  You'll notice the quickness you are able to orient to the view you need to continue on with your design work.