About Designating Annotations as Control Characteristics
Annotations created in Creo applications contain valuable information such as geometric tolerances, drawing notes, dimensions, surface finishing notes, and welding symbols. This information is particularly useful in the planning of downstream manufacturing processes. Therefore, you can designate annotations as control characteristics.
Control characteristics, like model items, capture and communicate the design intent and critical product information required by manufacturing. Not only can you use these control characteristics to find and reuse model data, the control characteristics are also useful in the planning stage. You can access information for the manufacturing decisions without having to open the models in the Creo application or other CAD systems to verify the model data. After you check in the models with the annotations designated as control characteristics to Windchill, MPMLink in Windchill accesses the designated annotations. Therefore, you can designate annotations as control characteristics according to manufacturing and machining requirements.
You can designate selected standalone annotations, annotations of annotation features, or as a combination of both. To designate multiple annotations, select one or more annotations, right-click, and select the Designation command on the shortcut menu. The command includes the following check boxes:
• Designate
• Control Characteristics
The designation is synchronized between the shortcut menu, ribbon, and Annotation Feature dialog box.
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 The legacy unconverted annotations are converted when you designate the annotations |
To designate a single annotation of annotation feature, do the following:
You can click
Annotate >
Annotation Feature or right-click an annotation of annotation feature on the Model Tree and click
Edit Definition and use the
Annotation Feature dialog box to designate annotation of annotation feature as control characteristics. To designate an annotation of annotation feature as a control characteristic, you must select an annotation of annotation featuret in the
Element Name column and select the
Designate and
Control Characteristic check boxes on the
Annotation Feature dialog box. You can click
Columns on the
Annotation Feature dialog box to open the
Annotation Columns dialog box and select the
Designate and the
Control Characteristics column names and add them as columns next to the
Element Name column in the
Annotation Feature dialog box. You can change the designation state of the annotation of annotation feature based on the information displayed by the
Designate and
Control Characteristics columns.
After you designate an annotation of annotation feature in the Designate dialog box, you can select the designated annotation of annotation feature in the Object Name list and select the adjacent check box in the Control Characteristics column.
When you designate annotation of annotation feature as control characteristics, you can set the
designate_model_item_params configuration option to
yes to automatically designate all the associated parameters, including the user-defined parameters, with their units and names, and store the designated parameters as IBAs on the server. You can click
Tools >
Parameters and undesignate some of the parameters in the
Parameters dialog box.
| If you add a parameter to a designated model object or annotation of annotation feature, you must also designate the newly added parameter to view the parameter as a new attribute in Windchill. |
When you check in the models to the server, the CAD Documents and the corresponding WTParts list the designated annotation of annotation feature. While you can search features by their IDs, you can search and retrieve annotation of annotation feature by their IDs and names, including unique user-defined names. Like model items, control characteristics are associated with the CAD Documents and WTParts checked in to the server. You cannot independently check out the designated annotation of annotation feature, edit them, and check-in the annotations.