Creating Technological Results

The Create Technological Results capability supplies technological information about the features included in a body. This information can then be reused at any stage of your design by downstream applications such as Generative Drafting for example.

The scenario provided shows you how to use the Create Technological Results capability. It illustrates that after pasting bodies from one part to another, technological results are not only kept but can also be updated to reflect the changes performed during the different design stages.
The CATProduct document provided for this scenario, includes four parts in which you will need to create technological results at different stages. After importing geometrical and technological results from one part to another, you will complete the scenario by generating the technological results of your final design. Here are the main steps you will perform:

In this section, you will also find the following reference information:

Scenario 1
Open the MMLStructure.CATProduct document.

Generating the Technological Results for the First Part

To generate technological results, you need to apply the command to bodies. To generate the Technological Results for the first part, Basic Feature, you will run the command on the three bodies, not on PartBody since the geometry it contains is not relevant.

  1. The CATProduct document provided for this scenario, includes four parts:

    • Basic Feature (first part)
    • Slice (second part)
    • Rough Part (third part)
    • Finished Part (final part)
    		  

    To generate technological results for the first part, double click it. Right-click Body.2 and select Body.2.object > Create Technological Results.

    The technological information which the capability can generate is:

    • Hole information
    • Thread information

    The application creates a Technological Results node for this body. This node contains itself two nodes, one for the hole, one for the thread/tap.
    You cannot edit this node. What you can do is rename it by using Properties or delete it.

  2. Repeat this operation for the other two bodies of this part. You obtain a technological result node for each body:

    Note that if now you edit Pocket.1 for example, the application automatically recalculates the technological results to reflect the changes to the pocket. The update symbol appearing the the Technological Results node while editing, indicates this behavior:

Editing the Second Part and Generating the New Technological Results

You are going to use the three bodies of Basic Features and their technological results to edit the second part in which you will simplify the structure by performing Assemble operations. When done,

  1. Copy and paste the three bodies using Paste Special As Result with Link into the second part, Slice part.

  2. To simplify the structure of Slice, perform three Assemble operations so as to assemble pasted bodies with slice bodies. By assembling all bodies, you will just have to run the Create Technological Results on a single body (PartBody). You must obtain this:

  3. Create pattern features to duplicate the holes for the final design.

  4. Right-click PartBody and select PartBody > Create Technological Results.
    T    he technological results for the part are contained in the Technological Results node.

  5. For methodological reasons, we recommend you publish that body which now contains the technological results.

Designing the Final Part

Designing Finished Part as the final part, reusing the Slice and the Rough parts. For methodological reasons, we recommend you publish the PartBody of Rough part.

  1. In Finished Part, copy and paste the published body of Rough part.

  2. Copy and paste the publication of the Slice part.

  3. Assemble both bodies generated so as to simplify the part structure.

  4. If now you click Tap/Thread Analysis to analyze the threads and taps of the part, you can see that the application cannot provide the technological results for your design.
    For information about the Tap/Thread Analysis capability, refer to Analyzing Taps and Threads.

Generating the Technological Results for the Final Part

Now that the part is fully designed, you can generate the technological results required by downstream applications.

  1. in Finished Part, right-click PartBody and select PartBody.object > Create Technological Results.
    The Technological Results  node for PartBody is displayed in the tree. At this stage of your design, this node reflects all technological results which can be generated.

     

  2. Using the Tap/Thread Analysis capability, you can check that the application now provides technological information.

    Machining and Drafting operations can be performed using these technological results without reloading the first three CATPart documents. Reloading Finished Part allows you to see the technological results of the whole CATProduct.

Highlighting Technological Results

In case you want to see which faces are associated to technological results, just use 3D Annotation Query Switch On/Switch Off . For more information, see Querying 3D Annotations.

Deactivating Technological Results

If after generating technological results you need to go on designing and updating your part, we recommend you deactivate the technological results obtained. Deactivating generated technological results is a good way of reducing the time spent by the application in recalculating the changes made to the part. Keep in mind then, that to optimize your design, you can use the Deactivate capability available from contextual menus.

Deleting Technological Results

It is possible to reduce the number of technological results generated by applying the Delete capability. To delete a technological result node, just right-click the node and select Delete.
This might be useful especially if you wish not to make all technological information available to everybody and need to restrict the information you provide.

Keep in mind that after deleting a technological result node, if later on you reapply Create Technological Results, the node you deleted is not recomputed. If you really need to retrieve that node, then just use Reset Deleted Technological Result. To use that capability, right-click the Technological Results node and select Reset Deleted Technological Result from the contextual menu.

Recommendations of Use

To take full advantage of the capability, here are two recommendations of use:

  • Downstream applications usually process root bodies. If intermediate bodies are not used, do not generate technological results for them. We recommend you generate technological results on root bodies only.

  • Generate technological results once you have finished your design.