Before You Begin  

There are a few things you should know before you begin creating technological feature dimensions.

Technological feature dimensions let you create dimensions for technological features such as electrical harness or structural stiffeners, or between technological features such as structural stiffeners.

Technological feature dimensioning relies on the fact that technological features can specify the way they should be dimensioned, which allows you to create only realistic and customized dimensions, based on the know-how of a given discipline.

Depending on the type of feature that you will be dimensioning, you need specific product licenses to create technological feature dimensions. For more information on the availability of technological feature dimensioning for a given workbench, refer to the related documentation.
 

Action/object and Object/action Mode

  Technological feature dimensioning is available in action/object mode (i.e. selecting the command first and then the feature to dimension) and in object/action mode (i.e. selecting or multi-selecting the feature(s) to dimension and then selecting the command).
 

Technological Feature Dimensions icons

  Several Technological Feature Dimensions icons are available from the Technological Feature Dimensions sub-toolbar.
  • Technological Feature Dimensions creates any type of technological feature dimension (intra or inter) specified by the feature, depending on the option selected in the Tools palette.
  • Multiple Intra Technological Feature Dimensions icon create either the intra-technological feature dimension type specified by the feature when only one is specified, or the preferential intra-technological feature dimension type specified by the feature when several are specified.
  • Chained Technological Feature Dimensions icon create either the inter-technological feature dimension type specified by the feature when only one is specified, or the preferential inter-technological feature dimension type specified by the feature when several are specified.
  • Length Technological Feature Dimensions , Angle Technological Feature Dimensions , Radius Technological Feature Dimensions and Diameter Technological Feature Dimensions create a specific dimension type when the feature specifies several dimension types. Using one of these options is particularly useful when you want to create a dimension type other than the preferential type specified by the feature.
 

Contextual menu

  At any time during the dimension creation, you can right-click a technological feature to display a contextual menu.
 
  This contextual menu is particularly useful when several dimension types can be created for a given feature. This depends on what is specified by the feature.
  • Optional choices, available when several dimension types are available for the selected feature or features, let you specify a single dimension type that you want to create, out of all the types available.
  • The All option creates all available dimensions for all selected features.
  • The None option creates none of the available dimensions for all selected features.
  • The Show Panel option lets you display the Technological Feature Dimensioning Selection dialog box.
 

Technological Feature Dimensioning Selection dialog box

  The Technological Feature Dimensioning Selection dialog box lets you select precisely the types of dimensions that you want to create for a given feature. This dialog box is particularly useful when several dimension types are available for a given feature (especially when creating inter-feature dimensions).
  • From the list area, you can select the types of dimension that you want to create for a given feature or de-select those that you want to delete. 
  • You can also use the Create drop-down list. The default option, (Selected), creates the dimension types selected from the list area above. The All option creates all available dimensions for all selected features.  The None option deselects all available dimensions for all selected features.
  • The Hide button lets you hide the Technological Feature Dimensioning Selection dialog box.

When a feature is checked and grayed out as shown below, it means that not all dimensions available for this feature have been selected.

 
You can also show or hide the Technological Feature Dimensioning Selection dialog box using the Show Panel icon available in the Tools Palette.
 

Limitations

  You cannot create coordinate, stacked and curvilinear dimensions for technological features.