Assembly Design > Top Down Design > Notebooks > Declaring Datums in a Notebook > About Declaring Datums by Table
  
About Declaring Datums by Table
Table declarations require more organization and planning, but they accommodate more sophisticated assemblies. Component datums retain their names when you use table declarations. The system connects them with the global names based on the table definitions. Select File > Manage File > Declare > Table to declare more than one global datum from a notebook to local datums. You can have multiple tables for a model corresponding to the references used in different assemblies. You cannot have multiple explicit declarations, since these reference the datum name.
Table declarations can be used to declare:
Different datums with the same global name (for example, to assemble bolts automatically into many single holes) by creating a table that contains the common declarations for each hole.
Individual datums with two different names (for example, to assemble parts into a subassembly using a datum with one reference name and then to assemble the subassembly into the main assembly using the same datum with a different reference name).
Each line in the table corresponds to a single assembly instance. Each line must contain all of the declarations used to automatically assemble that instance. Use the following format for each line in the table:
local dtm ref #1 = global dtm ref # 1, local dtm ref #2 = global dtm ref # 2, ...
 
* A negative sign (-) in front of a local datum reference indicates that the plane will be assembled in its flipped state. Both global and model datum references can appear in multiple lines of the table. All references must have unique global names. A datum axis and a datum plane cannot be declared with the same name.