About Declaring Notebooks
Information is exchanged between notebooks and components or other notebooks when you declare the notebook to a component or another notebook. You can use datum features, such as points and axes, for automatic assembly or to control dimensions of components in a specific instance of the assembly.
To reference global datums, you must also declare them to the specific datums in the component. To reference parameters, you must create relations that link local parameters to the global parameters in the notebook.
A model can be declared to multiple notebooks. If a model is declared to a notebook that references one or more other notebooks, the model references these notebooks also. Therefore, you can explicitly declare and use global parameters from a parent notebook even if they do not exist in the notebook to which the model is declared.
Relations are processed in order from the relations file. For example, if you set d2 = 30 it overrides the existing relation for d2, d2 = Height.
The following restrictions apply:
• You can modify a global reference only at its highest level.
• After a notebook has been declared, follow these guidelines to create a new parameter:
◦ Place the parameter in the lowest level for a local parameter.
◦ Place the parameter in the highest level for a global parameter.
◦ To change a local parameter to a global parameter, redeclare the notebook and delete the local version of the parameter.
You can access information about all declared datums, global dimensions, and the notebooks that they reference using the List Decl command in the Declare menu. Information displays in an Information Window and is written to a file named refitem.txt in the current working directory. One of three messages appears when the name of the model datum no longer corresponds to the name of the notebook datum:
• WARNING: 3D item has been deleted or suppressed. An axis or datum is no longer present to match its counterpart in the notebook.
If a declared name in the model is inconsistent with its counterpart in the notebook, use the UnDecl Name command in the Declare menu to rectify the problem.