Visiting Geometry Objects
Visiting geometry objects means acquiring the object handles to all the geometry objects in a solid model, either in the form of a ProGeomitem, or in the form of the various specific opaque handles.
The term “solid” is used in Creo TOOLKIT to distinguish models that contain three-dimensional geometry—parts and assemblies—from other model types, such as drawings. However, to the user, the term “solid” is used in parts and assemblies to distinguish features that represent the geometry of the design object from features used in construction only—the various types of “datum.” Within this section, therefore, the terms “solid geometry” and “datums” are used in that sense.
The most general way to visit geometrical items is through their features. The section
Visiting Feature Geometry describes this in detail, and includes an illustration of the hierarchy used.
You can also traverse solid geometry items through the hierarchy of surfaces, contours, and edges in a part. This is described in the section
Visiting Solid Geometry.
The following sections describe the traversal of the various datums. Some of these datums have their own visit functions, whereas others are visited through the feature hierarchy.
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Note:
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Although the user can create solid features in Assembly mode, the geometrical items that result from them are stored only within the component parts whose geometry is modified—not in the assembly features themselves. Therefore, although traversal of datums is applicable to assemblies exactly as to parts, no solid geometry items are found in assemblies.
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Datum planes, datum surfaces, and solid surfaces are all represented by the ProSurface object because they share the same types of mathematical description.