Selecting V5 Objects

Question: With V4, I could select all the points by typing "*PT". How do I do the same thing in V5?

Answer: Click on the Power Entry Field, and type "t:point". (The Power Entry Field is the white box in the lower-right corner of the V5 screen) After you type your command, CATIA will display a message on the left "n elements selected."

Question: What other kinds of elements can I select that way?

Answer: You can select almost any type of object with the Power Entry Field when you start by typing "t:" to specify that you want to select by element type. Some common elements are:

t:pointselect	all points
t:lineselect	all lines
t:planevselect	all planes
t:sketchselect	all sketches
t:wireframeselect	all wireframe elements
t:surfaceselect	all surfaces
t:partselect	all parts

So, for an example, let's say you want to hide all the planes in your part. You just click the hide icon, then click the Power Entry Field and type "t:plane".

By the way, after you've typed in the Power Entry Field a few times, you can recall previous types by clicking in the field and using the ? and ? arrows on the keyboard!

Question: Can I get a list of all the element types?

Answer: Sure. Use Edit + Search (or CTRL+f) to start the Search window in V5.

Change the workbench to Part Design, and click the down triangle to see a list of all the element types.

Question: What else can I do with the Search window?

Answer: The Search window is an easy way to search for and select objects, without having to memorize and type the element names. For instructions on how to use the Search window, use the CATIA Help tool (F1), and do a search for "Selecting Objects." Make sure you learn how to add and use Favorites.

Question: Can I do anything else with the Power Entry Field?

Answer: If you don't mind typing, the Power Entry Field can be used for many different things. For instance; you could type in commands, such as:

c:update	to update the part
c:hide/show	to hide or show selected elements
c:sketcher	to start the sketcher
c:measure	to measure an object
c:point	to add a point

For a complete description of how to use the Power Entry Field, go to Help (F1), and search for "using power input mode".

Leveraging Your PDM System to Track Data Versions and Revisions

More and more product development companies are recognizing the need for better solutions to managing their vast quantities of product data. In most cases, the greatest challenges lie in finding PDM and document management systems that are sufficiently flexible, powerful and easy-to-use to provide reliable management of virtually all electronic documents or files, including complex CAD product structures from all the current 3D modeling systems, including CATIA. Of course, once a company has chosen the data management system, someone has to ensure that it is used properly; some one needs to establish best processes and practices for using the technology. One challenging area of managing the documents and files concerns the way that revisions and versions are tracked. This is one of the many PDM tasks that SMARTEAM does very well.

It is a common policy to have a standard revision sequence, often made up of both alpha and numeric sequences with specific characters skipped to remove confusion (i.e., the letter 'I' is omitted as it is often confused with the number '1'). The follow steps describe how to configure SMARTEAM to follow a highly customized revision sequence of this nature.

We will create a custom revision sequence in SMARTEAM of the format A.0.0, when 'A' is the revision and '0' is the version and sub-version. Revision will span the letters 'A' to 'Z', skipping 'I', 'O' and 'S'.

1. Start the Sequence Designer and edit the Revision Mask (found in the Documents Attributes)
   
   
   
2. Enter a sequence pattern of A.9.9. In the sequence designer, 'A' and '9' are wildcards and will automatically be incremented.
   
   
3. In the 'Pattern Info' tab enter a range for 'A' of 'A..HJ..NP..RT..Z'. This range value tells SMARTEAM to use the values 'A' through 'H', then jump to 'J' and continue through 'N', and so forth. See the figure below.
   
   

   

4. To make the revision switch to numeric values, put the numeric range after 'Z'. The range would like be 'A..HJ..NP..RT..Z1..9'.

For more information, contact Chris Campbell (ccampbee@rand.com) or Warren Ralph (wralph@and.com), or go to Http://www.rand.com .