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 to get everyone else's impressions as a sanity check.
The Measurement Tool in Creo 2.... how do you feel about it? I spoke to the developers in Anaheim about it and told them I did not like it. I tried to demonstrate some of the issues but I don't think they were "getting it". The implied notion they gave me was that I simply wasn't using the tool correctly. Instead of staying in "Summary", I should be using "Distance", etc. I went back to my job resolved to take another crack at it. Perhaps I was missing just how great the tool was!
Eh... no.
I've making measurements very, very frequently and I do not like the tool. I'll admit my opinion may be colored by fatigue. I've been working 16-18 hours a day (12 on weekends) and I'm putting in tons of time in Creo 2.0. Managers are all over me like bees on honey and I just can't seem to get ahead. But still, is it just me?
To be more uncharacteristically direct ... this tool is a festering POS and I want to do bodily harm to the people who've forced it upon me. The measurement window is always directly under the tool menu. Summary mode is bloated providing me with all sorts of information I don't even want. Distance mode is terrible. I'm clearly picking ON THE SURFACE OF THE MODEL and yet I'm getting edges and vertices 15 levels behind the surface I'm picking. I have to use custom filters, mapkeys, or other techniques to force the tool to do a simple measurement.
I also don't like that I have to hold CTRL to select the second surface. I never had to do that in previous versions because each selection was in a separate reference selector. Now I must use the Query Bin to get the correct surface (because of the problem mentioned about)... but I have to remember to hold down CTRL before I choose it else I lose my first reference. So the measurement process for measuring from plane-to-plane or surface-to-surface is:
- Step into Measurement Tool using Distance mode.
- Right-click on surface and select Pick from List.
- Locate surface in list and select it.
- Right-click on surface and select Pick from List.
- Locate surface in list.
- Hold CTRL key.
- Double-click surface in list.
- Move measurement window to view results.
- Resume work in Creo and get to the point where I need to use the value... but oops, I just forgot what it was (this really happens). I used to be able to see it in the message log but now I have to remeasure unless I wanted to save the measurement as a feature (which I don't).
I think the thing that bugs me the most about the CTRL thing is that many of the different modes and subsystems of Creo are not consistent. In one mode you need to hold CTRL, in another you don't. It gets horribly confusing which one requires the CTRL technique and which one does not. It's like the tools aren't testing for conformity across the entire product.
Also, I don't like the measurement box floating in space cluttering up my screen. The results window only appears if you open it? I'm taking a measurement, that should tell someone I probably care WHAT THE HECK THE RESULTS ARE. This could be mitigated though if the results were given in the message log like they used to be. But that has been removed. For the love of all that's holy WHY was this removed? Was anyone really complaining that the message log was impeding their work?
And another thing about the message log... I want to see more information in that blasted message log. Over the years PTC has steadily been removing messages from the message log. I can only speculate as to why. I used to write PERL scripts that pulled all sorts of relevant data from the message window. But now much of that data no longer appears at all. Again... why? Is anyone complaining that trail files are just too long?
Anyway this is turning into a rant and I didn't mean for it to be. I just wanted to start a discussion of the measurement tool and possible enhancements. What are your thoughts?
Thanks everyone...
-Brian
At Wildfire 2,3, and 4 I just used a mapkey for measurements and I was happy... but of course all of my mapkeys were blown away in Wildfire 5 and then again in Creo 2 and I just don't have time to recreate them.