I was pondering the fact that I have been too busy to post anything lately, and I started thinking about what sort of things do I do on a daily basis that help to speed up my design process while running Pro/E? Then I thought about that Ctrl button, and the fact that my finger rarely leaves it. You are using it to make selections and zoom, etc. So for me, it was only natural to take advantage of the options available to hit ctrl + another button to get a desired result instead of moving my mouse all over the screen any more than I have to.

So here are some of my favorites I find myself doing all the time:
Ctrl+A - Activate your current window
Ctrl+F - Invoke the find tool
Ctrl+G - Regenerate the model
Ctrl+O - Open a file
Ctrl+R - Repaint the screen
Ctrl+S - Save
Ctrl+T - Make weak dimensions strong in sketcher

And here are some I use less often, but you may find useful:
Ctrl+N - Create a new file
Ctrl+P - Print

If you are on your computer as much as I am, you can probably understand the desire to reduce the number of mouse clicks you make in a day. Try some of these out for a week or so, and you’ll be hooked!

In this post we explore a feature that has been around for a while, but rarely gets used.

It is not the most practical tool, but perhaps by showing examples of how it could be used will spark an idea or two pertaining to your product line, and how you might apply the Blend Tangent to Surfaces tool. One idea shown here is how to add draft to a full round feature or geometry.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0

tangent_draft-wf3.prt

tangent_draft2-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0

tangent_draft-wf4.prt

tangent_draft2-wf4.prt

This is less a tutorial, and more a reference model. Here we have an involute tooth gear with the profile created from a curve by equation. Upon regeneration, it will promt the user for gear parameters, and whether it is a full gear or a partial or sector gear. It is a fairly light model, ie. no radii or extra features, and is based on the equations in my machine design handbook.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 involute_gear-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 involute_gear-wf4.prt

Below are a few models showing examples of the fundamental surface operations available;

Trim, extend, and offset… based on a presentation I gave at the SouthWest Michigan User Group meeting.

(The coaster cart does not have any notes to guide you, but the surface operations are given a name, while the other features are generally grouped together.)

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0

coaster_cart-wf3.prt - (Non-parametric, originally modeled in WF4)

extend_part-wf3.prt

silhouette_trim-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0

coaster_cart-wf4.prt

extend_part-wf4.prt

silhouette_trim-wf4.prt

Let’s discuss limiting how much the model can stretch in a certain direction.  Let’s say you have your a-surface model ready to go, and you want to do a brainstorming session with the industrial designer (or your boss), and maybe do some changes on-the-fly.  You do a quick modify by double clicking a sketch and dragging it out a bit, then you hit ctrl+g to regenerate and…  Boom! The model fails.  Instead of looking foolish in front of the ID person (and whoever else you invited to your meeting) why not find out where your model fails ahead of time, and set limits to prevent such a thing from happening.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 limits-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 limits-wf4.prt

This tutorial goes through all the ins and outs of the draft feature.  While building our model using some surfacing techniques, we will look at draft hinges, splitting drafts by hinges and by object.  After that we can look at a draft option we have while doing an offset command.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 draft-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 draft-wf4.prt

This tutorial will look at a part where an n-sided surface can be executed.  Then we will build the opposite side of the part with boundary blends.  After going through this exercise, you will hopefully understand perhaps a bit more about the pros and cons (mostly cons) of the n-sided surface, and the advantages of building a patch with boundary blends instead.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 coming  n-sided-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 coming  n-sided-wf4.prt

This tutorial will show a slightly different approach to get a flexible model, similar to the first tutorial. I recommend loading both of these tutorials to understand the different approaches, and pros and cons of both methods.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 concave_convex2-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 concave_convex2-wf4.prt

This tutorial will take a look at a technique for quickly modifying your model to go from concave to convex without redefining, adding, or deleting any features.

Right click and save on one of the following:

Wildfire 3.0 concave_convex1-wf3.prt

Wildfire 4.0 concave_convex1-wf4.prt