topic Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0 in 3D Part & Assembly Design

Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

BrianMartin — Fri, 04 May 2018 19:04:48 GMT

Hi everyone...I know I've been absent quite a bit. I'm heavy into a very large design task and therefore I'm using Creo 2.0 very, very heavily. While I do prefer it to Wildfire 5... and even to Wildfire 3, there are some parts that drive me insane. I guess I just wanted

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

James62 — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 16:11:55 GMT

hi Brian,

I can send you some of my mapkeys for measure tool in Creo 2.0, if you'd like.

I agree with you on most of the things. I can't understand why is that the measurement window position keeps changing everytime a measurement is taken, and also why it tends to fly all over the place. Why would anyone let the programmers to make anything like that. Every second time it just hides under the main measurement summary window.

I am used to look at message log too, for recent measurement values, from other CAD apps. So, I tend to open message log every single time for that purpose even in Creo. It's annoying when I don't find there anything. The good thing on the measurement window is that you can copy the measured value using RMB menu.

One more thing that bugs me is that the measurement window fonts are very very small, and I couldn't find any way to adjust their font size. The shape of the font is also annoying, not really suitable for numeric characters I'd say.

Also it could be nice if the measurement summary window could be closed just with MMB.

~Jakub

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

TomD.inPDX — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 18:47:28 GMT

I have to agree with you, Brian. When the tool doesn't even give you an X,Y, Z delta based on the default CSYS without picking the CSYS is absolutely wild. The dialog location and UI persistence are both very poor implementations. And don't even get me started on the "nearest" feature to the RMB click.

I'm sorry work is sucking up so much of your life, Brian. I've learned long ago that if you give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile, regardless of how much you "understand how important it is". Maybe they should have thought ahead and brought in some quality people a couple of years ago to fill the void (I'm available BTW ). I'm sure your pay didn't double when your workload did. I hope they honor comp time. Remember that American's tend to give away more work to employers than people from -any- other country.

Hang in there Brian. Hope to see you back here with your sage advice and scholarly solutions soon.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

gkrishna — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 19:09:08 GMT

Solidworks infection,solidworks have simlar way of measure tool.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dveljkovic — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 12:32:13 GMT

Brian,

I think the measure tool is the best tool I have ever seen! I like it soo much that I am trying to avoid using it. The best feature it has is that hide-behind-window, so I can play hide and seek everytime I use the tool. When I get tired of this game I just start playing "click on me to see the measured value" game and I love it.

CTRL button is really OK. It should be there. So software knows which two features are selected and measured from. But it does not work the "right" way, or we do not know how to use it. I should have been able to select multiple features and show only dimensions "connected" with CTRL button.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dgschaefer — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 14:23:31 GMT

I find the measure tool a big enhancement. I love that in 3 clicks (measure, pick item, pick item) I've got a summary of information about those two entities (I rarely use the specific tools, the summary tool does all that I need). I like being able to display the results in alternate units. I do agree that it has its quirks. The biggest is not being able to expand the results window by default. I've gotten accustomed to the ctrl key requirement.

The selection quirk you mention his very frustrating, but it's not exclusive to the measure tool and it's not new with Creo 2. It's been that way forever. Personally, I'd like to be able to toggle through the selectable items under my mouse as they would be found if I passe through the model. It seems that edges & vertexes get priority when surfaces are what I typically want. (You can set the selection filter to surfaces, which helps). It also seems that the order of the query select is different in different modes.

Oh, and you also said " It's like the tools aren't testing for conformity across the entire product." That's absolutely true, and mind boggling. A few years ago I pushed to be a part of the technical committees primarily to address cross module inconsistencies like this. I asked which committee worked with the part of PTC concerned with that. I was told that there is no top level UI oversight, each group does what they feel is best for them. That's why the MMB does so many different things (shameless plug - vote for my enhancement to fix that.) among other things.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

HugoBarosa — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:44:05 GMT

In my opinion this meaure tool is great! So many information by having 1 or 2 clicks or more if needed. The big problem is the the big changes between wildfire xx and Creo 2.0. It took me a while to full understand how it works but when i did, i don't want to go back again

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

gkrishna — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 22:48:27 GMT

Feature tab is completely hidden,this is one more drawback.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

SYNDAKIT — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 23:00:43 GMT

i do like that blue "i" button that gives that cool pop up window with the results.that deal has saved me a ton of scratch paper.

[the noise of trees clapping for creo]

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

gkoch — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 16:36:22 GMT

Hello Brian,

I admid that my enthusiasm about the changes was pretty small either.

Mostly it was because it did no longer work the way I was used to it. But I found out that it is not worse, just different:

Since I select with query select or from list most of the time anyway, geometry selection did not make much difference for me. I agree that it must be harder for those who work different. You will surely need the filters more often.
Before, I was used to click one reference in the dialog to replace it -> Now I click onto one item to remove again it and then the new one or I use RMB > Replace in the dialog
Before, I didn't had to press the CTRL button to select a second reference -> Now I have to, but it doesn't hurt much (not as much as an extra click would) and it is more consistent with the selection process in general
Previously I first told what type of measure I want -> Now I get a summary for me to use what I am interested in or I select it by RMB > Measure
And yes, I also liked to copy from the message log -> Now I select what I need in the summary and use RMB > Copy

As for why it has been removed: An internal SPR has been opened by Technical Support to check, why this happened. However, I believe the answer is rather obvious:

Instead of a single measure we are now getting a bunch of them in the Summary, so it is no longer so easy to output the result in a single line. And we already get the summary for the first selection. The second selection changes the output. So this would be quite some information, possibly cluttering the log.

Anyway, I have asked R&D, whether they want to consider adding a config.pro option to output summary information to our message log (people from Technical Support love the logs, as they often provide answers to querstions)

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

pimm — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:54:07 GMT

We still haven't made the giant leap to releasing work through Creo even though we have a lot of time spent in learning the software.

I have a couple comments to add to the discussion.

1) Without question the measurement tools are confusing to learn; sometimes you wonder whether you can even get from point A to point B. In the software we are replacing it is so simple and straight forward to get measurements. Why do they add so many layers of confusion?

2) Why is it that you don't see feedback in discussions like this from the product developement team. Brian is totally dependent on this software; and he represents many seats of Creo. At what point does the developement team care about how people actually use the software and why it is considered so unintuitive?

I like threads such as this as there are good ideas in how to make the best of confusing tools within Creo.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dveljkovic — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:26:53 GMT

Paul,

Look at how many users are complaning out LOUD about this tool. A few. Therefore, no one from PTC will even blink their eye because of us. If the number would be at least 1000, then they would start listening. Until then, we have to live with it, like it or not.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

pimm — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:35:17 GMT

I guess one of the dissillusioning things we ran into when making our switch was thinking that a company with greater resources such as PTC would equal greater responsiveness.

I do hope better days will follow.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dgschaefer — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:37:13 GMT

Paul,

I'm interested on why you find this tool confusing. It's extremely simple to me - select measure, select item one, hold ctrl & select item two. You get a variety of data depending on the itmes you've selcted. You do have to expand both areas of the measure dialog box (something that should be expanded by default, IMO), but behond that I'm not seeing layers of complexity. Can you elaborate?

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

TomD.inPDX — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:42:39 GMT

Doug, the fact that you need to know to choose a CSYS to get simple X, Y, Z data is something you have to get use to. This is the primary use I have for the measure tool. Not two clicks (and having to hold the CTRL) but three. This is not obvious on 1st opening the measure tool.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

pimm — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 18:57:04 GMT

Doug

Brian gives a very good example of this where he lists the 9 steps needed to measure plane to surface or surface to surface.

I'm glad that you can use the tool without difficulty; perhaps it all will make sense in time. Part of it is what a person gets used to. I guess I'd still prefer doing the same operation in 4 steps. Inquiry/Surface to Surface/Select 2 surfaces.

I'm very green at this software yet I've seen it surpass the software I still use in some of it's capabilities. Still I hate how cumbersome it is.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dgschaefer — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 19:18:03 GMT

I've been using Pro/E for 17 years and I believe you've always had to choose a CS to get X, Y, Z data.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

TomD.inPDX — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 19:28:49 GMT

That explains why I never liked using the measure tool in any version of Pro|E

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

dgschaefer — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 19:29:57 GMT

Not to get too picky, but much of the difficulty Brian lists has to do with long standing issues with the selection method in Proe / Creo, not really the measure tool. I agree with him on that point, query select should give me the nearest item first, the next nearest second and so on. It doesn't adn if it did, that would make measuring much easier.

You can set your selection filter at the bottom right of the screen from 'All' to 'Surface' which would help.

I've used Proe / Creo since 1996, rev. 16. The measure tool in Creo is a significant improvement compared to what we had before.

Re: Measure Tool in Creo 2.0

JonathanHodgson — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 07:32:04 GMT

Those of you with maintenance, please vote on this idea:

http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/1026