Fundamentals > Creo Parametric User Interface > The Tools Tab > Getting Information > Investigating References > About Reference Investigation
  
About Reference Investigation
Reference investigation allows you to investigate the relationships and dependencies between features and models, enabling increased management of design intent. You can perform reference investigation through the Reference Viewer dialog box when working on individual parts or assemblies. Use Tools > Reference Viewer to access the Reference Viewer dialog box. By using filters in the Reference Viewer dialog box, you can customize the contents of the Reference Viewer dialog box to show only dependencies of interest.
With the Reference Viewer you can:
Identify the features in a model that have external or local references.
Identify the features in a model that have a chain of dependencies from the feature to the referenced entity.
Reroute or redefine a feature to break the dependency, if any of the external or local references are not required.
Investigate regeneration failures by examining parent and child dependencies.
Obtain information about the models that have external or local references to a specified model and about their relation references. Using the relations reference type as a filter, you can investigate model and feature relations to identify local or external references, or both created by relations.
Identify references generated by relations and parameters.
Identify circular references.
Understand the relationships among various models, components, and features in an efficient and flexible manner.
Break dependencies between the specified model and its dependent model or between a Data Shearing Feature and its dependent model.
The relationships are displayed graphically in the form of a tree and uses arrow shaped graph connection handles to present multiple dependencies in an easily viewable form. The graph area can display multiple levels of parents and children at one time, allowing you to see an entire assembly structure and all interdependencies among all the models.
You can investigate the following types of references, or dependencies:
Regular references
Placement references
System references
Relations references, and
Component references.
 
If the Reference Viewer dialog box is open, you cannot modify an assembly.
If you close the Reference Viewer dialog box using File > Close and open it again in the same session, the previous reference information is retained and only changes to the assembly are updated.
If you choose a command from a Creo Parametric menu while the Reference Viewer dialog box is open, the Reference Viewer dialog box automatically closes. However, without closing the Reference Viewer dialog box you can view the information for a feature or model by clicking Info on the shortcut menu that appears when you right click a feature on the Model tree.