Introduction
This chapter contains several examples that will help you become familiar with Parametric Design tools and techniques.
All the examples assume that you are at a workstation, have Creo Elements/Direct Drafting up and running, and that Parametric Design is installed.
The first example introduces all the Parametric Design tools, proceeding step-by-step through an extended session with a simple drawing. We strongly recommend that you spend a little time going through this example before going on to the others. Subsequent examples present particular techniques or applications that you are likely to encounter as you use the software. These examples assume that you are comfortable with the Parametric Design interface.
The Creo Elements/Direct Drafting parts used in the examples are included online with the software. They are installed as uncompressed MI-format files in the pd_demos\ directory. Several of the examples depend on information in these files, so we encourage you to load each file as you work through the corresponding example.
The examples were chosen to be simple, and yet introduce you to the breadth and depth of this product. After going through these examples and carefully considering the questions at the end of each one, you should have developed a feel for nature of parametric design.
It would be a mistake to hope that you will be an expert Parametric Design user after just using these examples. In the real world, geometry is often more complicated. Models are underdimensioned, have unwanted symmetries, suffer from geometric inaccuracies, or have other "features" that are difficult for the automatic constraint generator to interpret correctly.
There are two rules of thumb that apply when using Parametric Design:
• If it isn't clear to you, at least in general, how a part should change in response to a modified dimension, then AUTO will likely have trouble as well.
• The better you understand the interplay between the various constraint types, and the rules governing each constraint type, the more effectively you'll be able to use Parametric Design.
One very good way to become expert in the science of constraining a part, is to practice using manual constraints on parts of increasing complexity. Use the automatic constraint generator to see how it would solve a particular problem, but make sure you understand the constraints that are generated. Once you fully understand how the various constraint types can be used and you get used to using the debugging tools, then begin to rely more on the automatic constraint generator.