A Beginner's Guide To Pro ENGINEER

A Beginner’s Guide to Pro/ENGINEER
(version 2000i2 )
Tom Chase
September 6, 2001
Contents Abstract
1 Starting and Exiting Pro / ENGI- Pro/ENGINEER is a feature-based, parametric,
NEER 2 fully-associative solid modeling system. We uti-
lize it in the mechanical engineering curriculum
2 Obtaining Further Information 4 because it is representative of the best computer
2.1 On-Line Manuals . . . . . . . . . . 4 aided design systems that are currently available.
2.2 Context-Sensitive Help . . . . . . . 6 As a side benefit, Pro/ENGINEER is popular in
2.3 Additional documentation . . . . . 6 industry, so becoming familiar with it may give
you a competitive advantage in finding employ-
3 Creating a Base Feature 7 ment.
This tutorial is intended to give you a rudi-
4 Basic File Management 14 mentary skill level in using Pro/ENGINEER in a
short amount of time. We introduce only a small
5 Changing the View 15 subset of the full capabilities of Pro/ENGINEER.
Nevertheless, this tutorial should provide you
6 Printing from Pro / ENGINEER 17 with all the information that is necessary to com-
plete and document simple designs.
7 Adding a Feature to a Base Feature 18 Starting and exiting Pro/ENGINEER from a
workstation in the ME 308 IT Instructional Com-
8 Creating a Second Part 20 puting Lab is described first. Documentation
that is available to enable you to learn more
9 Creating Assemblies 24 about Pro/ENGINEER on your own is described
next. Creating the basic geometry of a new part,
10 Creating Detail Drawings 27 called the “base feature”, is then described. Sav-
ing your Pro/ENGINEER designs, and managing
11 Epilogue 31 the large numbers of files automatically generated
by Pro/ENGINEER, is discussed next. Changing
the way your part is displayed on your worksta-
Index of “User Tips” tion screen is then described. Next, creating a
hard copy of your part is introduced. Adding
1 What do I do if the menus “freeze”? 2 to the base geometry of your part by adding
2 Exit Pro/ENGINEER regularly! . 14 new “features”, or geometric entities, is described
3 Purge Your Account Regularly! . . 15 next.
4 Check Your File Space! . . . . . . 15 The last three sections introduce more
5 Delete Shaded View “.plt” Files advanced, but very useful, capabilities of
After Printing! . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Pro/ENGINEER. First, we will create a second
6 Use Trimetric Views to Select Ge- part with a slightly more complicated base geom-
ometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 etry than the first part. Next, creating an assem-
1
2 “A Beginner’s Guide to Pro/ENGINEER”, Thomas
c R. Chase, 2001
bly by combining several parts is described. Fi-

User Tip 1: What do I do if the menus “freeze”?
nally, creating a detail drawing of a part using the
automatic drafting facilities of Pro/ENGINEER If the menus appear to “freeze” while using
is introduced. Pro/ENGINEER; i.e., if Pro/ENGINEER un-
expectedly stops accepting menu selections,
check the message window! Pro/ENGINEER
is probably waiting for you to input some data
1 Starting and Exiting Pro / from the keyboard for it to be able to continue.
ENGINEER Also remember, the mouse cursor must
be moved somewhere within an active
Starting Pro/ENGINEER is described Pro/ENGINEER window while typing a re-
first. The basic screen layout used by sponse to a prompt. Otherwise, the charac-
Pro/ENGINEER is then introduced. Finally, ters that you type will not be “seen” by the
exiting Pro/ENGINEER is described. program.
This tutorial assumes that you will be running
Pro/ENGINEER on one of the UNIX worksta-
tions located in the IT Instructional Computing empty. The additional contents shown in the fig-
Lab housed in ME 308. Pro/ENGINEER also ure appear as a Pro/ENGINEER model is built.
can be run on the “Windows” machines in ME All the windows used by Pro/ENGINEER are
308. This document utilizes UNIX system level standard UNIX-type windows that can be moved
commands rather than Windows equivalents, so or re-scaled on the screen by manipulating the
we suggest that first-time users start with a UNIX title bars at the top of the windows or borders at
workstation. the edges of the windows. However, the default
We will assume that you have successfully layout works very well for most users, so I do not
opened a window on the workstation for entering suggest resizing the windows.
system-level commands. The Pro/ENGINEER The main work window is the region where the
software is not immediately accessible1 . To gain geometry of your model is normally created or
access, enter the command2 modified. The top of the main work window
% module add mcad/proe/2000i2 contains a pull-down menu bar similar to most
Pro/ENGINEER is started by simply typing Windows-based software. The menu tree visu-
“pro”, in small characters, at the system-level ally represents all geometric features used in your
prompt: model. The dynamic menu area displays pop-up
% pro type menus for directing Pro/ENGINEER.
The workstation will pause for a few seconds The message window, located above the dis-
while the Pro/ENGINEER program is loaded to play region of the main work window, displays
your workstation from the “server” workstation. prompts at times when Pro/ENGINEER needs
Eventually, a window will appear on your work- you to input data. At times, you may want to
station similar to that illustrated in Fig. 1. In refer back to earlier message lines. A “scroll bar”
addition, a title page for Pro/ENGINEER is dis- at the right of the message window can be manip-
played over the top of the normal windows. This ulated to scan back over many previous message
page automatically disappears after a few sec- lines, if needed. If you scroll back to earlier mes-
onds, leaving the normal screen display in place. sages, remember to bring the scroll bar all the way
The initial display will not include the dynamic back down to the bottom of its range to make the
menu nor the model tree illustrated in Fig. 1. Fur- last prompt visible again.
thermore, the main work window will initially be A menu selection is made by moving the mouse
1 Software on the ITlabs system must be partitioned cursor over the desired entry and clicking on it
into modules because so much software is required by the with the left mouse button3 . Menu entries that
different IT departments. are dimmed are inactive for the current state of
2 The “default” version of Pro/ENGINEER for ITlabs,
which is usually one version below the most recent release, 3 For the remainder of this document, “clicking” on a
is accessible using the command: screen entity is defined as moving the mouse cursor over
% module add mcad/proe the entity and pressing and releasing the mouse button.
“A Beginner’s Guide to Pro/ENGINEER”, Thomas
c R. Chase, 2001 3
Tool bar Model tree on/off button

Menu bar Context−sensitive help button
Message
window
Dynamic
menu
area
Model
tree
window
Main
work
window
Menu help line
Figure 1: Basic screen layout of Pro/ENGINEER

c R. Chase, 2001
the program and can not be selected. which supplies Pro/ENGINEER, Parametric
The menu help line, at the bottom of the main Technology Corporation.
work window, is reserved for one-line descriptions
of menu selections from the dynamic menus. If
you move the mouse cursor over a dynamic menu
selection, the description of that selection will ap- 2.1 On-Line Manuals
pear in this line.
Pro/ENGINEER is terminated by selecting The on-line manuals are accessed through a web
the “Exit” command from the “File” pull-down browser. We will assume that you will be us-
menu. Pro/ENGINEER then opens another win- ing “Netscape” in ITlabs. You must start up
dow on top of the current display asking you to “Netscape”, so that it is running at the same time
confirm that you really want to terminate the pro- as Pro/ENGINEER, to access the help pages.
gram. Click on the “Yes” button to shut down the The simplest way to do this is to open a new
program4 . UNIX shell on your screen. Then, type:
Once Pro/ENGINEER has terminated, all the % module add netscape
Pro/ENGINEER windows are closed and you are % netscape
returned to the normal workstation screen dis- After “Netscape” has started, you can ac-
play5 . cess Pro/ENGINEER’s online help by selecting
“Help” from the menu bar at the top of the
Pro/ENGINEER window, then “Pro/E Help Sys-
2 Obtaining Further Infor- tem” from the resulting pull-down menu. After
doing this, your web browser window will appear
mation similar to Fig. 2.
A great deal of documentation on The upper right corner of the web browser win-
Pro/ENGINEER is available in ME 308. In dow will include a “Contents” button (see Fig. 2).
general, I recommend working through this tuto- Clicking on this button will cause a window with
rial first to develop a feel for Pro/ENGINEER’s a Table of Contents to appear on the left of the
conventions, then improving your skill level browser window. A delay of a few seconds may
by exploring the alternative documentation. occur between clicking the button and the ap-
However, the available documentation is de- pearance of the Table of Contents.
scribed now to provide resources in the case that The entries in the Table of Contents can be
you have questions while working through this expanded hierarchically by clicking on the “+”
tutorial. symbol preceding any topic. Similarly, an ex-
The most current documentation on panded entry can be contracted by clicking a “−”
Pro/ENGINEER is only available through entry. For example, Fig. 3 shows the Contents
a web browser. The first two subsections below with entries for “Pro/ENGINEER Foundation”
explain two different methods for accessing the and “Using Part Modeling” expanded. You can
latest documentation. The last section describes obtain information on any topic in the “Table of
printed references, which are less up-to-date, as Contents” by double-clicking on the topic.
well as short courses sponsored by the company The “help index” provides another useful way
4 Ifthe system is set up to automatically start the “Ap- for locating documentation on Pro/ENGINEER
plications Manager”, you may still see a window entitled functions. The index is invoked by simply click-
“PTC Application Manager” at the upper left of your ing on the “Index” tab to the right of the “Con-
screen. Click on the “Start” button, then click on “Exit”
tents” tab in the Table of Contents window (see
from the resulting pull-down menu, to shut down the Ap-
plications Manager. Fig. 3). The Index will take a few seconds to load.
5 If you are using an SGI workstation, remember that You can then locate information on the topic of
you must log out using a special procedure: move the your choice by scrolling through the index. Alter-
mouse cursor to a background portion of the screen, then
press the right mouse button to raise a menu that includes
nately, you can enter a keyword in the “keyword”
a “Logout” entry. Simply typing “logout” at a system field and press the “Display” button at the bot-
prompt will not log you off the workstation! tom of the index.
c R. Chase, 2001 5
"Contents"
button
Figure 2: The layout of the web-based help page.

c R. Chase, 2001
Figure 5: Start of context-sensitive help for the

“Relations” entry of the “Part” menu
2.2 Context-Sensitive Help

You can instantly obtain documentation on any
menu entry in Pro/ENGINEER by utilizing the
“context-sensitive help”. You must first open a
Netscape web browser window to use context-
sensitive help, as described in subsection 2.1.
The simplest way to obtain context-sensitive
help is to click on the “?” button at the right of
the tool bar (see Fig. 1), then click on the menu
entry for which information is desired. The doc-
umentation for the menu entry will immediately
appear in your web browser. For example, Fig. 5
shows the top of the browser window which is ob-
tained by clicking the “?” tool, then clicking on
Figure 3: On-line help contents with the “Relations” entry of the “Part” menu.
“Pro/ENGINEER Foundation” and “Using Context-sensitive help can also be invoked by
Part Modeling” expanded. clicking the “Help” entry on the top menu bar,
then selecting “What’s this?” from the resulting
pull-down menu.
2.3 Additional documentation

Printed documentation on Pro/ENGINEER is
available for check-out from the ME 308 lab at-
tendant. Unfortunately, Parametric Technology
Corporation discontinued printed manuals follow-
ing Version 20 of Pro/ENGINEER, so the printed
references are somewhat out of date. Neverthe-
less, they can still provide useful information.
Short courses on Pro/ENGINEER are also de-
scribed at the end of the section.
Please note that printed documentation can
not be removed from ME 308.
“Inside Pro/ENGINEER”, by J. Utz and
Figure 4: Obtaining documentation on the model W. R. Cox (Santa Fe, NM: OnWord Press)
tree with the help index. is a tutorial-style textbook for learning
Pro/ENGINEER on your own. You will
find it to be similar to the level of this tutorial,
c R. Chase, 2001 7
but more extensive. This text is also available

for purchase from the University Bookstore’s
reference section.
Older printed manuals published by Paramet-
ric Technology Corporation include: “Introduc-
tion to Pro/ENGINEER”, “Part Modeling User’s
Guide”, “Assembly Modeling User’s Guide”, and
“Drawing User’s Guide”.
“Introduction to Pro/ENGINEER” provides
a tremendous amount of information on the
general organization and functionality of the
Pro/ENGINEER system. Useful chapters de-
scribe how to manipulate views of parts or assem-
blies, arranging part or assembly geometry on dif-
ferent “layers”, using “trail files”, and customiz-
ing Pro/ENGINEER to fit your preferences.
Basic through advanced information about cre-
ating parts, adding features, and modifying parts
is provided in the “Part Modeling User’s Guide”.
Creating and modifying assemblies of parts, as Figure 6: The “New” dialogue box.
introduced in section 9 of this tutorial, is fully de-
scribed in the “Pro/ENGINEER Assembly Mod-
eling User’s Guide”. fabricated. Pro/ENGINEER follows the feature-
Part geometry is not defined on the basis of en- based design strategy of establishing a base fea-
gineering drawings in Pro/ENGINEER. Instead, ture, then superimposing the remaining features
three-dimensional part geometry is defined first, on the base feature.
then the two-dimensional drawings are derived We will introduce how a part is created in
from this geometry. Creating conventional engi- Pro/ENGINEER by defining a simple base fea-
neering drawings from a Pro/ENGINEER model ture. We will call the base feature a “cubic”,
is described in the “Drawing User’s Guide”. which will be a rectangular block. Our “cubic”
Parametric Technology Corporation offers a se- will be created by “sketching” a two-dimensional
ries of short courses on Pro/ENGINEER rang- rectangular cross-section, then adding depth by
ing from learning the basics to utilizing spe- “sweeping” the cross-section along a line perpen-
cialized modules, such as the sheet metal fab- dicular to the sketching plane. A detailed proce-
rication module. Information on registering for dure is provided below.
Pro/ENGINEER short courses is available by If you have not already done so, start
calling the Parametric Technology Corporation Pro/ENGINEER as described in Section 1. Next,
local sales office at (952)820-0026. Some of these select “New” from the pull-down “File” menu. A
courses have substantial tuition charges, so you dialogue box similar to that shown in Fig. 6 then
may want to wait for your employer to send you! appears. The default selections of Type “Part”
and Sub-type “Solid” are applicable to our new
model. You need only move to the “Name” field
3 Creating a Base Feature and replace the default name of “prt0001” with
“cubic”. Press the “OK” button to complete the
A “feature” is defined here as a distinct geomet- definition of the part name.
ric entity of a part, such as a “hole”, “boss”, The model tree window, similar to that shown
or “fillet”. The geometric entity comprising the in Fig. 1, then appears over the main work win-
basis for all others, such as a “block” or “cylin- dow. The model tree is useful for keeping track
der”, is described here as the “base feature”. In of many features in a complicated part. However,
other words, you may think of the base feature as we will simplify the display by closing it while
the stock from which a machined part would be creating the base feature. Do so by clicking the
c R. Chase, 2001
red arm of
default coordinate frame sym
datum
planes
positive ‘‘x’
default
coordinate
system
Figure 7: Default datum planes.

"RIGHT" plane (ye
model tree on/off button which is located on the Figure 8: Relating coordinate directions and da-
tool bar (see Fig. 1). tum planes.
The “PART” menu appears in the dynamic
menu area at this point. Furthermore, three or-
thogonal “default datum planes” and a “default nate frame symbol. Thus, the dot will always
coordinate system” appears in the main work correspond to the “positive”, or yellow, side of
window (see Fig. 7). the datum planes. The relationship between the
The datum planes are labeled “RIGHT”, coordinate frame symbol, datum planes and as-
“TOP”, and “FRONT”. The “positive” side of a sumed directions is clarified in Fig. 8.
datum plane is displayed in yellow. The positive The actual base feature geometry is now cre-
sides of all three datum planes are visible in the ated in reference to the default datum planes. Se-
default view, so they all appear yellow on your lect “Feature” from the “PART” menu, then se-
display. If the view were re-oriented to show the lect “Create” from the resulting “FEAT” menu.
“negative” sides of any of the planes, they would Menus “FEAT CLASS” and “SOLID” are then
be displayed in red. displayed. Note that “Solid” is highlighted on
The default coordinate system appears at the the “FEAT CLASS” menu, indicating that this
origin defined by the intersection of the three de- is the default selection.
fault datum planes. This symbol is intended to Select “Protrusion” from the “SOLID” menu.
help you establish your orientation while map- This raises a three-section “SOLD OPTS” menu,
ping a 3-dimensional image to a two-dimensional with default selections “Extrude” and “Solid”
workstation screen. The red arm indicates the x- highlighted. Select “Done” from the third section
direction, the green arm indicates the y-direction, of the menu to confirm these selections.
and the cyan arm indicates the z-direction. Us- A new window indicating the status of the
ing this assumption, the default datum planes “Protrusion” feature that you are creating now
are numbered so that the “RIGHT” plane is appears at the upper right of the screen. You
perpendicular to the x-direction, the “TOP” may largely ignore this window until you become
plane is perpendicular to the y-direction, and more familiar with the system. Nevertheless, you
the “FRONT” plane is perpendicular to the z- may find it interesting to watch how the next few
direction. menu selections progressively fill up the table of
The positive direction of each axis is indicated feature data shown in this window.
by a dot at the end of each arm of the coordi- The “ATTRIBUTES” menu is now displayed
c R. Chase, 2001 9
in the regular menu area. Entry “One side” will tion of your desired solid7 . The main work win-
be pre-selected. Select “Done” from the bottom dow appears similar to Fig. 9. You are now
section. looking directly into plane “FRONT”. Note that
Three new menus now appear: “SETUP you can clearly see the “positive” sides of the
SK PLN”, “SETUP PLANE” and “GET SE- “RIGHT” and “TOP” planes in yellow, and the
LECT”. However, more importantly, you receive “negative” sides in red, in this view. The red
a prompt in the message window to select or cre- x-axis and green y-axis are oriented in their con-
ate a sketching plane. You will sketch a two- ventionally assumed directions.
dimensional rectangular profile in the xy-plane, Pro/ENGINEER provides an “intent man-
which is equivalent to datum plane “FRONT”. ager” to facilitate the definition of sketches of
To ensure that you pick “FRONT” correctly from cross sections. You do not need to create ex-
the work window, select “Query Sel” from the act profiles of the cross section of your intended
“GET SELECT” menu6 . part. Rather, you can sketch an approximation
Next, move the mouse cursor into the work win- to the cross section and refine it later. The intent
dow and move it close to the label “FRONT”. manager makes reasonable assumptions about ge-
Press the left mouse button to attempt to choose ometric intent, such as assuming horizontal and
“FRONT”. The selected plane is highlighted in vertical line segments. Do not worry about di-
the main work window. If your selection is suc- mensions at this time; simply sketch the shape
cessful at the first attempt, immediately select of your cross-section such that it fills the display
“Accept” from the “Query Bin” window, which nicely.
appears below the dynamic menu on the right of The sketch is begun by specifying features in
your screen. If you accidently select “RIGHT” the sketching plane to use as references for newly-
or “TOP” instead, re-position the mouse cursor sketched entities. The intent manager will con-
and press the left mouse button again. Using the strain sketched entities to these designated fea-
“Query Select” option, you can repeat your selec- tures if you sketch close to them. For example,
tion as many times as you like until “Accept” is we will sketch our cubic so that the left side is
selected from the “Query Bin” window. aligned along the “RIGHT” plane and the bot-
Note that a small red arrow that points in tom is aligned along the “TOP” plane8 . In other
the +z-direction is added near the bottom of words, the cubic will be placed in the first quad-
the outline of the “FRONT” plane. The mes- rant of the coordinate frame suggested in Fig. 9.
sage window now contains the prompt: “Arrow The sketcher knows that references are needed
shows direction of feature creation. Pick FLIP or to constrain your sketch in the “X” and “Y” direc-
OKAY.” The arrow shown is consistent with the tions. The sketcher assumes that the “RIGHT”
Pro/ENGINEER convention of creating “Protru- and “TOP” datum planes will be used as the
sion” features so that they are swept “out” from references, as no other geometry exists at this
the workstation screen. Therefore, select “Okay” time. The likely references are marked with or-
from the “DIRECTION” menu. ange dash-dot lines, as indicated in Fig. 9. Ac-
You are now prompted to select or create a cept these reference assumptions by clicking the
horizontal or vertical reference for sketching. Se- “Close” button in the “References” dialogue box
lecting “Default” from the “SKET VIEW” menu at the upper right corner of the screen.
orients the sketching plane so the positive side of In general, sketcher versatility is maximized if
the “TOP” datum plane faces up and the posi- your sketch approximately fills the work window.
tive side of the “RIGHT” datum plane faces to Since our cross section will be located in only the
the right. first quadrant, we will now change the view of the
You have now entered Pro/ENGINEER’s
7A “SKETCHER ENHANCEMENT - INTENT MAN-
“sketching” tool for creating a planar cross sec-
AGER” window may be displayed over the normal work
6 Once you have had some practice in making selections, window when the sketcher is invoked. If so, you can elim-
you may prefer to use the default “Pick” option, which inate this window by pressing the “Close” button at its
enables you to select the desired plane immediately with base.
the left mouse button. However, “Query select” is still 8 This layout enables utilizing the datum planes as log-
very useful if you need to make a selection from a cluttered ical datum references for inspecting the actual part that
display. would be created from this model.
c R. Chase, 2001
(red face, RIGHT) (yellow face, RIGHT)
references
dialogue
box
(green ‘y’−axis)
(yellow face, TOP) sketcher

tool
(red face, TOP) bar
(red ‘x’−axis)
sketching
reference
indicators
Figure 9: Empty sketcher display.
sketching plane to “zoom in” on this area. The

procedure is summarized in Fig. 10.
Hold down the “Ctrl” key. Press and immedi-
ately release the left mouse button at a point a
little to the left of the “RIGHT” plane and a little
above the yellow bounding box shown at the top 1) Press ‘Ctrl’ key,
hold it down,
of the sketching plane9 . As you move the mouse then click
away from that point, a box indicating the zoom left mouse button
here
area will be “rubber banded” from that point.
Drag it to a point a little below the “TOP” plane
and a little to the right of the yellow bounding
box at the right of the sketching plane. Press
and release the left mouse button a second time.
As you do so, the area defined by the zoom box
will be blown up to nearly fill the work window10 .
The profile of our cubic is a simple rectangle, as 2) Drag box to here,
suggested in Fig. 11. When drawing the rectangle then click
by following the steps described below, remem- left mouse button
a second time
ber to make the width noticeably larger than the
height; otherwise, the sketcher may assume that
you are drawing a square rather than a rectangle.
9 Hold the mouse steady while clicking the left button, Figure 10: Zooming in on the first quadrant of
or an alternate “zoom” function may be invoked. the sketching plane.
10 If you make an error at this step, you can re-set the
sketching window to its default size by selecting “View”

from the menu bar at the top of the main work window,
then “Previous” from the resulting pull-down menu.
c R. Chase, 2001 11
third point
fourth point
fifth point
(coincides with
start point)
start point
second point
Figure 11: Sketching the cross-section of the cubic base feature.

c R. Chase, 2001
: select
ing the bottom side and initializes the line seg-
: line segment ment representing the right side.
Move the mouse cursor to the upper right cor-
: rectangle
ner until you have defined an approximately ver-
: circle
tical line comprising the right side, as shown in
: arc
Fig. 11. The intent manager will indicate that it
: fillet assumes the line is vertical by labeling the line
: spline with a “V”. Make sure the right side is shorter
: ref coord sys than the bottom side. Click the left button
: entity from edge a third time, completing the right side. Simi-
: dimension larly, move the mouse cursor horizontally to the
: modify “RIGHT” plane and click the left mouse button
: constrain a fourth time, completing the top side. Finally,
: trim move the cursor back to the starting point and
: mirror click the left mouse button a fifth time, complet-
ing the left side.
: done / cancel
As the mouse cursor is moved away from the
lower left corner of the sketch, a line segment is
Figure 12: Meaning of sketcher tool bar icons again rubber banded from the previously selected
point. This undesired line segment is canceled by
clicking the center mouse button.
The sketcher tool bar is displayed to the right The intent manager defines default dimensions
of the sketcher work window (see Fig. 9). The for your cross section upon completion of your
meaning of the tool bar icons is illustrated in sketch. The assumed dimensions are shown
Fig. 12. Remember that you can obtain a brief lightly on your display and in Fig. 11. In the case
description of each icon on the menu help line by of our cubic, the critical dimensions are the width
moving the cursor over each icon. Alternately, and height. If the intent manager did not as-
you can look up the meaning of each icon using sume the dimensioning scheme that you wanted,
context-sensitive help. you can override its assumed scheme using the
You can choose to sketch different types of geo- “dimension” icon in the “SKETCHER” tool bar
metric entities, such as line segments, rectangles, (see Fig. 12). However, in our case, we need
circles, and arcs, by choosing the appropriate icon only change the assumed dimensions to the val-
from the tool bar. The line segment icon is se- ues that we prefer. The desired width and height
lected by default, as it is the most commonly used are shown in Fig. 13.
sketcher entity. To change a dimension, first choose the “mod-
Move the mouse cursor close to the intersection ify” icon from the sketcher tool bar (see Fig. 12).
of the “RIGHT” and “TOP” planes, as shown in Then, left click on each dimension that you want
Fig. 11. Then, click the left mouse button. The to modify (239.97 and 180.19 in Fig. 11). Upon
first point of the cross section will be attached to doing so, each dimension that you select will be
the intersection of the specified references. added to a “Modify Dimensions” dialogue box
As you move the mouse cursor from the start- that will appear in the vicinity of the main work
ing point, a line segment is “rubber banded” from window (see Fig. 14). Move the cursor into the
the start point to the current cursor position. If numeric field for each dimension and change them
you keep the cursor close to the “TOP” plane, to the desired values. The sketch will update im-
the intent manager will lock your line to the plane mediately. Press the green check mark button at
and indicate that it is horizontal by labeling the the bottom of the “Modify Dimensions” dialogue
line with an “H”. Move the cursor horizontally box to close the box when you are finished.
across the “TOP” plane until it approaches the Your cross-section is complete when it is con-
right border of the sketching plane, as shown in sistent with Fig. 13. Click the “done” icon in
Fig. 11. Click the left mouse button a second the sketcher tool bar (see Fig. 12). You receive a
time. This completes the line segment represent- prompt asking you to specify the feature depth in
c R. Chase, 2001 13
Figure 13: Suggested dimensions for the rectangular cross section.
the “direction indicated by the arrow”. Note that

the blue dot representing the z-axis of the coor-
dinate frame symbol is now highlighted by a red
circle. This indicates that the “arrow” is pointed
directly out of the screen.
Additionally, a dynamic menu entitled “SPEC
TO” is raised, with option “Blind” as the default
selection. Accept the default by choosing “Done”
at the bottom of this menu. A prompt is then
issued to enter the depth of the cubic feature.
This will become its z-dimension. Type “4.0”,
followed by pressing the “Enter” key.
A prompt now states: “All elements have been
defined. Select element(s) or action(s) from the
dialog box.“ You accept your definition of the
cubic feature by clicking on the button labeled
“OK” in the “PROTRUSION: Extrude” window.
Your base feature is now complete! You can
see the third dimension of your cubic part by
changing the view as follows. First, select “View”
from the menu bar above the main work win-
Figure 14: The “Modify Dimensions” dialogue dow. Then, select “Default” from the “ORIEN-
box. TATION” menu. Your screen should appear sim-
ilar to Fig. 15. Additional view options are intro-
duced in Section 5.
In review, construction of the base feature con-
sisted of instantiating a set of default datum
planes, then defining a planar cross section, then
extruding the cross section to convert it to a solid.
c R. Chase, 2001
User Tip 2: Exit Pro/ENGINEER regularly!

If you work continuously on Pro/ENGINEER
for a long period of time, exit and re-start
Pro/ENGINEER on a regular basis. Half-
hour intervals are suggested. This simplifies
recovery in the case of a catastrophic error.
I highly recommend that you “Save” a part pe-

riodically, parallel to the way you would periodi-
cally update a text file developed on a word pro-
Figure 15: Default view of cubic.
cessor. This will protect you in the case of acci-
dently corrupting a complicated part well into its
The cross section was created using the development, or a “crash” of the computer sys-
sketcher. Use of the sketcher can in turn be sum- tem.
marized in three steps. First, identify the refer- If you would like a break, this is a good
ence features to constrain your sketch. Second, time. Pro/ENGINEER is terminated by select-
sketch the cross-sectional profile. Third, dimen- ing “Exit” from the “MAIN” menu, as described
sion the profile. in Part 1.
The “Save” command creates a new version of
the part file every time that it is issued. Further-
4 Basic File Management more, these files may be large. Therefore, these
files can start consuming large amounts of your
If you are working through this tutorial as you disk space. In addition, Pro/ENGINEER creates
read it, you are probably ready for a break. How- a “trail” file that keeps a record of all commands
ever, Pro/ENGINEER will not save any of your that you have input every time you run the pro-
part or assembly definitions unless you specifi- gram12 . While useful, these files can also clutter
cally instruct it to do so. This section begins your catalog.
by showing you how to save files and safely exit Pro/ENGINEER provides a system-level
Pro/ENGINEER. “purge” command to control the files associated
When you do save files, large files start build- with the program. The system-level purge com-
ing up in your account quickly. Pro/ENGINEER mand eliminates all but the most recent version
provides convenient tools for controlling the pro- of all part, assembly, and drawing files that it
liferation of these files. This section concludes finds on the current directory. Furthermore, the
by instructing you how to use these tools at the command deletes all but the most recent trail
system level, then re-start the program. file. The system-level purge is run by simply
Your cubic part part is saved by selecting “File” exiting the Pro/ENGINEER program, then
from the menu bar above the main work window, typing “purge” at the command prompt13 :
then “Save” from the resulting pull-down menu. % purge
You are then prompted for the name of the object You will want to retrieve your cubic part at
to be saved. Pro/ENGINEER suggests a default the time that you re-start Pro/ENGINEER. This
name, “CUBIC.PRT”11 , developed from the base is accomplished by starting Pro/ENGINEER as
feature name. The suffix “.PRT” is automatically described in Part 1, then selecting “File” from
added to the file name to clearly identify it as the menu bar above the main work window. Se-
a part file. Simply press “Enter” to accept the lect “Open” from the resulting pull-down menu.
default file name. The message “CUBIC has been A dialogue box labeled “File Open” will appear
saved” will be printed. 12 These enable advanced users to recover sessions when
an error occurs. In addition, they can be used to set up

11 While the prompt shows this name in all capital let- demonstration sessions.
ters, the name of the file that is actually saved to your 13 The Pro/ENGINEER module must be loaded for the
directory is in all small letters. “purge” command to be recognized.

c R. Chase, 2001 15
You can appreciate the visualization power of

User Tip 3: Purge Your Account Regularly!
the shaded view further by spinning your cubic
Run the system-level “purge” command regu- in the main work window so that you can see its
larly to conserve your file space. various sides. This is accomplished by selecting
“Spin / Pan / Zoom” from the “View” pull-down
menu. This raises a dialogue box labeled “Orien-
User Tip 4: Check Your File Space!
tation” at the upper right of your display. The
IT students are allocated 100 Mb of file space bottom half of this dialogue box contains a set
on their ITlabs accounts. If you exceed this of sliding controls labeled “H”, “V” and “C” to
allocation, your files may be automatically enable you to spin your part.
deleted! The sliding controls are manipulated with the
You can check how much of your file space mouse. For example, place the mouse cursor on
you are using with the command: the slider in the “V” scale, then press and hold
% quota -v down the left mouse button. Slide the mouse cur-
Use the “quota -v” command regularly sor back and forth. As you do, the cubic appears
to see if you are nearing your disk quota. to spin around the y-axis. When you have ro-
We strongly suggest that you delete unwanted tated the cubic to the position you desire, you
files if your usage exceeds about 75 Mb. This can “lock” it there by releasing the left mouse
is particularly important when you are work- button. You are then free to activate a different
ing frenetically to complete a project! sliding control, or make another menu selection.
If you want to bring your cubic back to its orig-
inal position at any time, select “Default” from
on your display showing all available parts in the
the pull-down “View” menu. You can zoom in
current catalog. You can re-open the cubic by
on a portion of your part by manipulating the
selecting file “cubic.prt” with the mouse cursor,
“Zoom” sliding control in the center of the “Ori-
then pressing the “Open” button at the bottom
entation” dialogue box. The “Pan” sliders at the
of the dialogue box.
top of the “Orientation” dialogue box enable you
The retrieved part is displayed in the main
to move the display left or right (the “H” slider)
work window in its default orientation14 .
or up and down (the “V” slider). Press the “OK”
button to close the “Orientation” dialogue box.
5 Changing the View Zooming in is done so frequently that a short
cut is provided for this operation15 . The short cut
Pro/ENGINEER gives you many facilities for does not require you to open the “Orientation”
manipulating the appearance of the object in the dialogue box. Hold down the “Ctrl” key. Click
main work window. They are accessed through the left mouse button to define the first corner of
the “View” selection from the menu bar above the a rectangle defining the desired viewing area16 .
main work window. The usage of several popu- Move the mouse cursor away from this point to
lar viewing selections is introduced here. In par- cause a rectangle indicating the viewing area to
ticular, creating a shaded view of the part, re- be dragged across the screen. When you have
orienting the part, zooming in on a portion of the the opposite corner placed where you want, click
part, and changing the color of your part are de- the left mouse button a second time. The region
scribed. Try all these manipulations with your included in the viewing area rectangle is then ex-
sample cubic part. panded to fill your screen.
The ability to create shaded views is one of You can zoom in or out using a minor modifi-
the attractive features of solid modeling systems. cation of this procedure. Again, press and hold
The part appears “solid”, so you can develop a 15 This short cut was actually already used to zoom in
better appreciation of its appearance before actu- on the sketching plane in Section 3.
16 Be sure to hold the mouse steadily in one position
ally manufacturing it. The default system set-up
automatically displays solids using shaded views. before clicking the left mouse button the first time for
this operation. If the mouse moves at the time the left
14 Remember, you may want to turn off the “model tree” mouse button is pressed, the alternate zooming shortcut
to maximize visibility of the work window. described in the next paragraph will be invoked instead.
c R. Chase, 2001
down the “Ctrl” key. Now, move the mouse up or button. Lower the percentage of red included in
to the right, then press the left mouse button after your new color to about 127. You will note that
starting to move it. Your work window will con- the color block at the top of the scale appears
tinuously include a larger viewing area; i.e., you turquoise. Use the RGB sliders to adjust the sam-
will zoom out from your current display. Moving ple color block to your satisfaction.
the mouse down or to the left in this operation
When your color definition is complete, click on
will zoom in rather than out.
the “OK” button at the bottom of the “Color Ed-
The main work window can be returned to its itor” window. Then click on the “OK” button at
original appearance at any time by selecting “De- the bottom of the “Appearance Editor” dialogue
fault” from the “View” pull-down menu. box. Your new color is then added to the palette
The default color of your cubic is white, as is shown in the “Appearances” dialogue box.
evident in the shaded view. You may want to
change its color, particularly if you intend to com- Now, you can change the color of your cubic to
bine this part with others in an assembly. This your new color. A chip of your new color will be
is done by choosing “Model Setup” from the bot- displayed in the “Set Object Appearance” section
tom of the “View” pull-down menu, then “Color of the “Appearances” dialogue box. You can al-
& Appearances” from the right pop-up display ternately select any other color in the palette by
available from that selection. This raises a dia- clicking on its button in the palette display. Then
logue box labeled “Appearances”. press the “Set” button at the bottom of the “Ap-
A palette of currently defined colors is dis- pearances” dialogue box. The new color of the
played at the top of the dialogue box. Initially, cubic will be reflected in the main work window.
the palette contains white and yellow. You can You must save your part after changing its color
add a new color by pushing the “Add” but- to permanently record its new color. A separate
ton below the palette. This raises a dialogue procedure is used to save your new color on the
box entitled “Appearance Editor”. This window palette for future use in other parts. Click on
has three sub-sections: “Basic”, “Advanced” and the “File” pull-down menu entry at the upper left
“Detail”. We will use only the “Basic” section in corner of the “Appearances” dialogue box, then
our introduction. choose “Save As” from the resulting pull-down
The “Basic” section has an entry termed menu. This raises another dialogue box, entitled
“Color” with a white pallet entry as a far right “Save”, that enables you to save a file in your cur-
button. Move the mouse cursor over this button rent catalog that contains your custom palette. A
and click on it. This raises a new window labeled common name for this file is “color.map”. Click
“Color Editor”. the “OK” button at the bottom of the “Save”
The Color Editor window contains two sec- dialogue box to create or update this file. Click
tions: “RGB”, a concatenation of “Red-Green- the “Cancel” button to close the “Save” dialogue
Blue”, and “HSV”, a concatenation of “Hue- box. Click the “Close” button to close the “Ap-
Saturation-Value”. These provide two indepen- pearances” dialogue box.
dent options of defining new colors17 . We use the
“Repaint” is another useful selection available
“RGB” option in this exercise.
from the “View” pull-down menu. Repainting
The RGB section contains a sliding scale for can often be used to “clean up” the main work
each color. They are initially all set at a max- window in the case that other commands have
imum of 255, yielding white18 . The color you corrupted the display.
define is reflected in a sample color block at the
top of the window. The “View” commands can be applied at any
Try moving the “R” (red) slider by holding the time without affecting the remaining functional-
mouse cursor over it and depressing the left mouse ity of Pro/ENGINEER. For example, you can
zoom in on a portion of geometry while using the
17 These options are discussed in the class ME 5241,
sketcher without adversely affecting your sketch.
Computer Aided Engineering.
18 The scale of 0 to 255 indicates the number of color Experiment with applying the “View” commands
gradations available using 8 bits of intensity control for at any point where they might help in your de-
each color gun. sign.
c R. Chase, 2001 17
6 Printing from Pro / ENGI- a “Destination” of “postscript”. If you wish to

print to a color printer, choose a “Destination” of
NEER “Generic Color Postscript”19 .
We recommend that you always create a file
Printing in Pro/ENGINEER is accomplished in before sending your file to the printer if using
three steps. First, the view is set up to appear workstations in ITlabs. This is recommended so
exactly how you want it printed in the main work that you can check your print before paying to
window. Second, a print file is generated. Third, plot it. Furthermore, you can choose which of
the print file is sent to the printer at your conve- the many printers available in ITlabs you wish to
nience. receive your print at any time. Pro/ENGINEER
The first step is accomplished with the “View” is instructed to create a file for printing by se-
commands described in Section 5. However, you lecting “To file” and de-selecting20 “To printer”
may wish to print a “hidden line” image of your in the “Print” dialogue box. Initiate creation of
part rather than a shaded image to save disk the print file by pressing the “OK” button at the
space on your account. Instructions to change bottom of the “Print” dialogue box.
your display from shaded to hidden line are sup- A dialogue box labeled “Print to File” is then
plied first. Generating a print file and send- raised showing the default print file name. The
ing it to the printer are then described. Fi- default file name consists of the object name with
nally, advanced users are provided with informa- the suffix “.plt” appended. For example, the de-
tion on how to modify PostScript files generated fault name for a plot of the “cubic” part is “cu-
by Pro/ENGINEER to enable importing them to bic.plt”. You may change this name if you wish.
other software packages. Click on the “OK” button at the bottom of the
The mode for displaying solids in the main “Print to File” dialogue box to generate the plot
work window is changed by re-setting the “en- file. If you accepted the default plot file name in
vironment” for your Pro/E session. Select “Util- the “Plot” window, your catalog now contains a
ities” from the menu bar, then “Environment” Postscript file named “cubic.plt”.
from the resulting pull-down menu. This raises Since you are charged for all prints made in
an extensive “Environment” window on the right ME 308, you may wish to examine your plot
side of your screen. on your workstation screen before sending it to
The lower portion of the “Environment” win- the printer. This can be done after exiting
dow includes a “display style”. This is set to Pro/ENGINEER by using the “ghostview” util-
“shading” by default. To change this setting to ity21 :
a wireframe image with hidden lines, click on the % ghostview cubic.plt
pull-down arrow to the right of “Shading”, then Ghostview is terminated by placing the cursor
select “Hidden Line” from the four possible dis- over the “File” button at the upper left of the
play options. Click the “OK” button at the bot- screen. Press down the left mouse button, then
tom of the window to close the “Environment” slide the cursor over “Quit” and release the left
window and modify your display. mouse button.
You can set the main work window display back If your plot file appears acceptable using
to shaded views by repeating the procedure, but “ghostview”, you can send it to the printer using
selecting “Shading” as the “Display Style”. How- the standard, system-level “lpr” command. For
ever, I recommend that you normally work in example, if you want to make a black-and-white
“Hidden Line” display mode. You can temporar- print on the Hewlett-Packard laser printer in ME
ily shade the objects in the main work window at 308, issue the command:
any time by selecting “View” from the menu bar % lpr -Pme308 cubic.plt
then “Shade” from the resulting pull-down menu. 19 This is selected by default for shaded views.
The display can be returned to hidden line wire- 20 A menu item containing a check mark symbol to its
frame by selecting “View”-“Repaint”. right is “selected”. Clicking on a checked menu item will
“de-select” the item, causing it to be “turned off”.
The “Print” dialogue box is raised by select- 21 You can examine your plot without exiting
ing “Print” from the “File” pull-down menu. If Pro/ENGINEER by opening another UNIX shell to
you wish to create a black-and-white plot, choose use the “ghostview” utility.
c R. Chase, 2001
Next, examine line 13, which declares the “Pa-

User Tip 5: Delete Shaded View “.plt” Files After
geSize”. If the two integers following the “Page-
Printing!
Size” read “792 612”, reverse them. The correct
Shaded image PostScript files are very large. line reads:
To conserve your file space, delete all such files <<PageSize[612 792]>> setpagedevice
as soon as you no longer need them. Now, examine line 14, following the “PageSize”
line. This line will contain a closing curly bracket
followed by the word “if”. Leave the closing curly
For a color print in ME 308, issue the command: bracket, but delete the word “if”. Your “.plt” file
% lpr -Pme308-color cubic.plt should now be well behaved when imported to
Please remember, you must pay for every print other software.
that you make. The costs depend on the size,
media and printer style; check with the lab at-
tendants in ME 308 for details22 . 7 Adding a Feature to a Base
By default, your plot files include representa-
tions of datum planes, coordinate systems and
Feature
axes of any revolved features. You may want to Your base feature should be created to represent
“clean up” your print by suppressing the display only the simple net shape of your actual part. Ad-
of these entities. This is accomplished by select- ditional geometry, such as holes, cuts, fillets, and
ing “Environment” from the “Utilities” pull-down protrusions, should be added as separate features.
menu. This section describes how to add a through hole
Display of the datum planes is suppressed by feature to your cubic part as an example. Some
de-selecting “Datum Planes” from the “Environ- other common feature choices are introduced at
ment” dialogue box. Display of the coordinate the end of the section.
systems is suppressed by de-selecting “Coordi- The finished hole is illustrated in Fig. 16. Con-
nate Systems”. Display of axes of revolution is struction of the hole can be conceptualized as
suppressed by de-selecting “Datum Axes”. You follows. We will place a circular profile on the
can also suppress display of dimension tolerances “FRONT” datum plane. The profile will be lo-
and spin centers, if you prefer. The main work cated 2 inches to the right of the “RIGHT” da-
window will not reflect your changes until you tum plane and 2 inches above the “TOP” da-
select the “Apply” button at the bottom of the tum plane. We will then generate the hole by
dialogue box or “Repaint” from the “View” pull- “sweeping” the circular profile forward for the
down menu. Press the “OK” button to close the entire thickness of the part. Note that many
“Environment” dialogue box. Pro/ENGINEER features are created by defin-
More advanced users may wish to ing a two-dimensional profile on a plane and then
take PostScript plots generated using sweeping it into a third dimension.
Pro/ENGINEER and utilize them in other Referencing features to the default datums is
software, such as the “xfig” drawing package or generally desirable to obtain good part structure.
LATEXdocuments. You will have to edit three of Therefore, we will reference the datum planes of
the first 14 lines of the PostScript file to enable the cubic to place the hole. If you turned the dis-
this. Fortunately, this is easy to do with your play of the datum planes off while creating a print
favorite text editor, as described below. file of your part, turn it back on before beginning
First, open your “.plt” file with your favorite the hole feature. As explained in Section 6, this is
text editor. The second line of this file will spec- done by selecting “Environment” from the “Utili-
ify the “bounding box”. Change the four integer ties” menu, then selecting “Datum Planes” in the
numbers on this line to read: “Display” options.
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792 New features are added to an existing part
22 Large-format (“B”, “C”, “D”, or “E” size) plots can
by selecting “Feature” from the “PART” menu.
also be made on the Calcomp plotter in ME 308. Instruc-
Then, select “Create” from the “FEAT” menu.
tions on how to print to this plotter are available from the This raises the “FEAT CLASS” menu with
lab attendant. “Solid” pre-selected. A hole is created by se-
c R. Chase, 2001 19
Figure 16: Adding a through hole to the cubic.
User Tip 6: Use Trimetric Views to Select Geom-

etry
Use trimetric views, such as provided by the
“Default” view, to select edges, planes, da-
tums, and axes for defining dimensions and
positioning features. The trimetric view en-
Figure 17: Dialogue box for creating a “hole” fea-
ables you to ensure that the intended geomet-
ture.
ric entity was selected. In contrast, if you
attempt to select geometry from a parallel
view with superimposed entities, you may ac- Select the “FRONT” datum plane by clicking
cidently select one of the superimposed enti- on the “FRONT” label with the left mouse but-
ties! For example, you may accidently select ton. If the “FRONT” datum plane is not imme-
an edge on a back face, instead of an intended diately highlighted, try clicking the right mouse
edge on a front face, from a view that overlays button to scroll through multiple possible selec-
the two faces. tions. When the “FRONT” datum plane is high-
Remember, you can always change the view lighted, confirm the selection by clicking the cen-
without affecting the part under construction! ter mouse button.
You will now obtain a prompt to “Select the
feature’s placement location on the datum plane”.
lecting “Hole” from the “SOLID” menu. This Pro/ENGINEER is asking you to approximately
will raise a “HOLE” dialogue box similar to place the hole on the “FRONT” plane with the
Fig. 17. The paragraphs which follow explain how mouse. This enables Pro/ENGINEER to figure
to change the default entries to the values shown out the approximate relation of the hole to the
in Fig. 17. other placement references. Position the mouse
First, left-click on the arrow button to the right somewhere in the vicinity shown in Fig. 18, then
of the “Primary Reference” entry of the “Hole click the left mouse button.
Placement” section in the “HOLE” dialogue box. You will now obtain a prompt to “Select first
This will raise a prompt which reads: “Select a reference for hole placement”. Place the mouse
plane, cylinder, cone or point as the primary ref- somewhere in the main work window and click
erence for the hole placement.” Press the right the right mouse button to invoke “Query se-
mouse button somewhere within the main work lect”. Then, click the left mouse button near the
window in order to invoke the “Query Select” op- selection with the left mouse button. We are encouraging
tion for selecting the reference23 . you to utilize the “Query select” option at first until you
are more comfortable in making selections. “Query select”
23 As you gain confidence and skill in making selections is oftentimes invoked by advanced users when attempting
in the main work window, you can immediately make a to make selections on a cluttered display.
c R. Chase, 2001
Left−click mouse about here

on the ‘‘FRONT’’ datum plane section to “2.0”. Finally, press the green check-
mark button at the bottom of the dialogue box
to complete the definition of the hole. Your hole
should then appear similar to Fig.16. Remember,
you must now save the cubic in the database to
make the through hole a permanent feature!
Pro/ENGINEER provides a multitude of other
possible features. Most, if not all, of the features
that you will use in this class are accessible from
the “SOLID” menu. Common selections may in-
clude “Round”, “Chamfer”, “Cut”, and “Protru-
sion”. Remember, you can obtain brief descrip-
Figure 18: Approximately locating the hole posi- tions of these features by highlighting each with
tion on the “FRONT” datum plane. the mouse and reading the menu help line.
“RIGHT” plane label. If necessary, click the right 8 Creating a Second Part
mouse button to scroll through multiple possible
selections. When the “RIGHT” datum plane is A second simple part, a “pin”, is now created for
highlighted, click the center mouse button to con- three reasons. First, you will obtain experience
firm your selection. in creating a “solid of revolution”, rather than an
Next, you will receive a prompt to “Select sec- extrusion. Second, you will gain more experience
ond reference for hole placement”. Select the with the facilities of the “sketcher”. Finally, you
“TOP” datum plane using a procedure similar will need two parts to create a sample assembly in
to the above. the following section. Much of the procedure for
If you look at the lower left of the part, you creating the pin is similar to the steps presented
will see a red arrow pointing back from the part in Section 3. The unique steps of creating the pin
and dual yellow arrows pointing forward into the are explained below.
part. We would like our hole profile to sweep all If you did not exit from Pro / ENGINEER fol-
the way through the part in the yellow direction. lowing the completion of Section 7, the cubic is
Since the hole profile is defined on the rear face still displayed in the main work window. The
of the part, we don’t need it to extend in the red main work window needs to be cleared if you
direction at all. wish to create the new part in it. This is accom-
We communicate our desires for sweeping the plished by selecting “Close” from the “Window”
hole profile to Pro/ENGINEER by making en- pull-down menu.
tries in the “Hole Dimension” section of the The pin is initiated by selecting “New” from
“HOLE” dialogue box. First, left click the pull- the “File” pull-down menu. This raises the
down menu arrow at the right of the text field of “New” dialogue box with “Part” pre-selected.
the “Depth Two” descriptor (see Fig. 17). Select Enter “pin” in the “Name” field, then press the
“Thru All” from the resulting pull-down menu. “OK” button.
Then, left click the pull-down menu arrow at the As mentioned in Section 7, you can visualize
right of the text field of the “Depth One” de- creation of many solids in Pro/ENGINEER as
scriptor. Press the left mouse button and select a process of sketching a two-dimensional cross-
“None” from the resulting pull-down menu. You section and then sweeping it into a third dimen-
may have to scroll to the bottom of the pull-down sion. The features for the cubic were swept by
menu to see the “None” entry. “extruding” it along a straight line in the third
Now, we will assign actual dimensions to the dimension. Pro/ENGINEER offers more elegant
diameter and the position of the hole. Change the options for sweeping in the third dimension. For
“Diameter” field in the “Hole Dimension” section example, you can revolve a profile around an axis
of the “Hole” dialogue box to “0.75”. Then, set to create a circular or spherical shape.
both “Distance” fields in the “Hole Placement” You have two options for creating the pin at
c R. Chase, 2001 21
this point. You could revolve a rectangular cross-

section about an axis, or you could extrude a cir-
cular cross-section. We will create the pin as a
revolution to expand your domain of commands
in Pro/ENGINEER.
Note that “Extrude” is pre-selected on the
three-section “SOLID OPTS” menu. Therefore,
you must change the selection in the top section End centerline
Start centerline approximately here
to “Revolve”. Accept the pre-selection of “Solid” approximately here
from the center section. Then, select “Done”
from the bottom section of the “SOLID OPTS”
menu.
Accept the pre-selection of “One Side” from the
“ATTRIBUTES” menu. Then, choose “Done”
from the bottom section.
The next few steps set up the sketching
plane, exactly as was done in Section 3. Se-
lect “FRONT” as the sketching plane. Choose
“Okay” from the “DIRECTION” menu when
prompted for the direction of feature creation.
Select “Default” from the “SKET VIEW” menu.
The sketcher grid should then appear in the main
work window. “RIGHT” and “TOP” will be pre- Figure 19: Creating an axis of revolution for the
selected as sketcher references. Close the “Refer- pin
ences” dialogue box.
Revolved sections require definition of a center
line around which the section is revolved. The
center line is a distinct type of line segment which
must be explicitly selected in the sketcher. Click
on the arrow to the right of the line segment tool
in the sketcher tool bar (see Fig. 12), then click
on the vertical dashed line button to the right of
the resulting menu. Define a center line on top of
the “TOP” axis, as suggested in Fig. 19, using the
left mouse button. Then, re-set the line segment
tool to the normal line segment.
The complete profile to be revolved is suggested
in turquoise in Fig. 20. You will create the pro-
file in three separate steps, itemized in Figs.21
through 23, respectively. Each step is described
below.
Create the four line segments shown in Fig. 21.
Align the bottom of the first vertical line segment
with datum plane “TOP”. Align the third line axis of revolution
segment with datum plane “RIGHT”. These line
segments can be defined using the left mouse but- Figure 20: Completed (undimensioned) profile of
ton, as was done in Section 3. Remember, the the pin.
center mouse button terminates the creation of
line segments.
Second, create the tangent arc at the right side
of the profile, as suggested in Fig. 22. Select the
c R. Chase, 2001
2 Start closure line here
End closure line here

3
Figure 23: Closing the profile.
fine a line segment extending from the left edge of

the revolved profile to the bottom of the tangent
arc, as suggested in Fig. 23. This line segment
should be drawn on top of both the centerline
Figure 21: Definition of initial line segments
and datum plane “TOP”. This line segment is
defining pin profile. (Assumed lengths shown by
used to close the revolved profile.
sketcher aren’t important.)
We wish to define the pin with four parameters:
the overall length, the length of the cap, the diam-
“Arc” tool from the sketcher tool bar (fig. 12). eter of the pin body, and the diameter of the cap.
Begin the arc by moving the mouse cursor close The sketcher assumed the overall length dimen-
to the right end of the fourth line segment created sion consistent with our design intent in Fig. 23.
in the previous step. Then, press and release the However, dimensions for the cap length and diam-
left mouse button. The arc is “rubber banded” eters must be defined to over-ride the sketcher’s
from the cursor as you move the mouse cursor initial assumptions.
downwards and to the right. Move the mouse Dimensioning schemes are changed from the
cursor so that the center symbol of the arc falls on sketcher’s assumptions by selecting the “Dimen-
top of plane “TOP”. Then, press the left mouse sion” tool from the “SKETCHER” tool bar (see
button a second time to complete the definition Fig. 12). The method for dimensioning the cap
of the arc. length is shown in Fig. 24. First, select the
Third, again select the line segment tool. De- “Right” datum plane using query select24 . Sec-
ond, left click on the vertical line segment repre-
(Align vertical position of center symbol with ‘‘TOP’’ datum)
senting the top of the pin. Third, place the di-
mension symbol at a convenient spot by clicking
Start tangent arc here the center mouse button.
Diameter dimensions are defined by left click-
ing on a line representing the edge of an outer
diameter, left clicking on the center line, then
left clicking on the line representing the edge of
an outer diameter again. Finally, the dimension
symbol is placed with the center mouse button.
24 Remember, to invoke query select, place the cursor in
the main work window and click the right mouse button.
End tangent arc here You could also dimension to the vertical line representing
the bottom of the cap or the reference aligned with the
“RIGHT” datum plane. However, dimensioning to the
Figure 22: Creating a tangent arc. datum plane probably best describes the design intent.
c R. Chase, 2001 23
3) Place dimension at convenient location 1) Select OD line with left mouse button
(Use center mouse button) 2) Select center line with left mouse button
3) Select OD line with left mouse button
4) Place dimension in a convenient location

with center mouse button
Figure 25: Defining the diameter of the pin body.

1) Select the ‘‘RIGHT’’ datum plane.
(Use ‘‘query select’’)
2) Select vertical line (representing cap top) the mouse cursor somewhere on the pin geometry
in the main work window and click the left mouse
Figure 24: Defining the cap length. button. The default dimensions assumed by the
sketcher should then appear, similar to Fig. 26.
Left-click on one of the displayed dimensions.
For example, the procedure for sizing the diam-
This will raise a prompt labeled “Enter value”
eter of the pin body is summarized in Fig. 2525 .
to appear on the message line, with the current
The diameter of the cap is dimensioned using par-
dimension shown in the text field. Type in the
allel steps.
correct dimension (from Fig. 27) and press the
The sketcher will insert arbitrary dimensions
enter key. The corrected dimension should ap-
during definition of the sketch. We wish to change
pear on the display, although the geometry won’t
the values of the pin to those summarized in
yet actually change to reflect the updated value.
Fig. 27. This could be done in the sketcher by
Change all four dimensions indicated in Fig. 27
using the “Modify” tool. However, we’ll instead
to their desired values.
demonstrate how to change dimensions at the
part level. When all dimensions have been updated, select
“Regenerate” from the “Part” menu. The geom-
The sketch is completed by clicking the “Done”
etry will then be corrected to be consistent with
tool on the sketcher tool bar. You will then be
your new dimensions.
prompted to “select revolve option”. We want
the pin profile to be fully rotated about the cen- I suggest that you change the color of the pin to
ter axis, so choose “360” from the “REV TO” contrast with the cubic, as described at the end of
menu. Then, choose “Done” from bottom of the Section 5. Then, save the pin for later retrieval.
“REV TO” menu. Press the “OK” button in the Creation of the pin has been used to expose
“PROTRUSION: Revolve” dialogue box to com- you to some of the options for defining circular
plete the definition of the base feature. Change features using the sketcher. The same pin could
the view to “Default”. have been defined using a variety of alternate enti-
Select “Done” from the “FEAT” menu. Then, ties. For example, the pin could have been defined
select “Modify” from the “PART” menu. Place with a flat, rather than a spherical, tip. The tip
could then have been modified to its final shape
25 Be sure to dimension the outer diameter of the pin
by superimposing a second “round” feature.
using the line representing the pin diameter, and not the
point representing the intersection of the tangent arc with
In general, the base feature should be kept as
the outer diameter. The latter produces unexpected re- simple as possible. Try to limit the sketch used
sults. to create the base feature to ten entities or less.
c R. Chase, 2001
Figure 27: Desired dimensions for the pin.
possibilities for creating assemblies, are provided

at the end of the section.
You should either exit Pro / ENGINEER af-
ter completing the pin, or select “Close” from
the “Window” pull-down menu to clear the main
work window. Then, select “New” from the
“File” pull-down menu. Once the “New” dia-
logue box is displayed, change the selection from
“Part” to “Assembly”. Provide any convenient
name for your assembly in the “Name” field, such
as “demo assem”. Press the “OK” button to start
defining the assembly.
The main work window will then display a set
of datum planes similar to that used to create a
new part, except that the datum plane labels are
now each preceded by an “ASM ”. For example,
Figure 26: Default dimensions displayed in the the plane perpendicular to the X-axis is labeled
part window. “ASM RIGHT”.
You will now add the cubic to the assem-
bly. Choose “Component” from the “ASSEM-
9 Creating Assemblies BLY” menu, followed by “Assemble” from the
“COMPONENT” menu. A dialogue box labeled
Pro/ENGINEER provides the designer with tools “Open” is raised. Click on “cubic.prt” from the
to combine several separate parts into an assem- resulting list of entities. Press the “Open” but-
bly. Furthermore, you can group combinations ton. The cubic is then displayed in the main work
of parts into sub-assemblies, then manage a sub- window. The cubic will be positioned on top of
assembly similar to a single part. The full asso- the assembly datums by default.
ciativity of Pro/ENGINEER reflects any changes You will now provide directions on how the cu-
made on a part in all assemblies where that part bic should be oriented with respect to the refer-
is used. The use of the assembly facility is intro- ence datums. This is done by way of the dialogue
duced here by giving you detailed instructions on box entitled “Component Placement”, which is
how to assemble the pin with the cubic. opened to the right of the screen. In general,
The general procedure starts by creating a set three constraints are needed to position one part
of default datum planes in assembly mode. Com- with respect to the assembly datums. The cu-
ponents are then added one at a time, each refer- bic is placed by applying the “Align Offset” com-
encing the default assembly datum planes. Some mand three times.
suggestions for creating robust assemblies, as well First, change the “Constraint Type” field in
as simplifying the potentially confusing variety of the “Component Placement” dialogue box from
c R. Chase, 2001 25
“Automatic” to “Align Offset”26 . This is done by of the “Component Placement” dialogue box.
moving the mouse cursor to the downward arrow The steps for aligning “TOP” of the cubic with
to the right of the field, clicking on the arrow, “ASM TOP” of the assembly datum planes are
then selecting “Align Offset” from the resulting briefly overviewed here. First, ensure “Align Off-
pull-down menu. set” is still selected as the “Constraint Type”
“Align Offset” aligns two planar surfaces such in the “Component Placement” window. Then,
that they are parallel and their normals point in select the “ASM TOP” plane using “query se-
the same direction27 . The offset allows you to lect”, and reference its “yellow” side. Next, se-
control the distance between the two surfaces. lect “TOP” using “Query Select”, and reference
You are prompted to select a surface or datum its “yellow” side. Specify an offset of 0 inches.
on one part. Move the mouse cursor into the main The second constraint is then complete.
work window and click the right mouse button to Follow the same procedure to align “FRONT”
enter “Query Select” mode. Click near the cen- with “ASM FRONT”. You may have to explicitly
ter of the front left edge of the cubic with the type in the offset of 0 to align the “FRONT” da-
left mouse button. The goal is to select datum tum with the “ASM FRONT” datum, since the
plane “ASM RIGHT”; when you are successful, cubic is initially placed with a default offset of -4
the “ASM RIGHT” label will be clearly high- inches.
lighted in red. If necessary, try selecting again When the procedure is complete, you should
with the left mouse button, or scrolling through see three “Align Offset” constraints listed in the
potential surfaces with the right mouse button. upper half of the “Component Placement” dia-
When the “ASM RIGHT” plane is highlighted, logue box. You should get a message that the
click the center mouse button to accept it. cubic component is “Fully Constrained” in the
You are now prompted to choose which side of “Placement Status” field near the bottom of the
datum plane “ASM RIGHT” to use for orienting “Component Placement” dialogue box28 . When
the cubic. Note that an arrow is displayed near you succeed in defining all three constraints, click
the center of the left rear edge, clarifying the “yel- the “OK” button at the bottom of the dialogue
low” direction. Select the “yellow” button of the box. You will then receive the message: “COM-
“Datum Orient” dialogue box. PONENT has been created successfully.”. Save
The next prompt asks you to select a planar the file after successfully assembling the cubic
surface or datum plane on the cubic. Select da- with the assembly datum planes.
tum plane “RIGHT” of the cubic using “Query The assembly is completed by adding the
Select”. You are likely to have to click the right “pin”. Select “Assemble” from the “COMPO-
mouse button to select plane “RIGHT” of the cu- NENT” menu. The “Open” dialogue box is raised
bic rather than plane “ASM RIGHT” of the as- once more. Click on “pin.prt”, then press the
sembly. When you have accepted the selection “Open” button. The pin then appears in your
of “RIGHT”, you are prompted to choose which main work window, next to the cubic, as shown
side of the datum plane to use for the orientation; in Fig. 28.
select the “Yellow” button of the “Datum Orient” You will now define how the pin is located
dialogue box. with respect to the assembly datums. We will
The constraint is completed by specifying the arbitrarily choose to do this by specifying how
offset to include between “ASM RIGHT” and the “yellow” sides of the datum planes for the
“RIGHT”. Accept the default of 0 by pressing pin should be located relative to the “yellow”
the “Enter” key. Your complete constraint should sides of the assembly datums. To orient the pin
now appear in the “Constraints” list near the top the way we would like it, the yellow normal to
26 “Automatic” “ASM RIGHT” should face in the same direc-
mode would assume placement using
“align” constraints rather than “align offset” constraints tion as the yellow normal of “FRONT” of the
in the following steps. “Align offset” provides flexibility pin, the yellow normal to “ASM TOP” should
for future adjustments, as described later in this section.
27 The normal to a solid surface always points away from 28 If you have problems, you can click the “Cancel” but-
the solid side of the surface. Datum planes are exceptions ton at the bottom of the “Component Placement” dialogue
to this rule; you may reference a normal on either side of box. This eliminates the cubic component from your as-
a datum plane, as explained later in this section. sembly altogether, so you can start over.
c R. Chase, 2001
Figure 28: Initial appearance of work window

when assembling the pin and the cubic.
face in the same direction as the yellow normal Figure 29: Shaded view of completed assembly.
to “TOP” of the pin, and the yellow normal to
“ASM FRONT” should face in the opposite di-
rection of “RIGHT” of the pin. ponent No. 6 ‘PIN’. Confirm selection.”, keep the
The first two constraints are specified using mouse on the pin and press the right mouse but-
“Align Offset”, as was done before. However, ton until you do. Then, press the center button of
specify an offset of 2 inches for both of these con- the mouse to accept your choice. The current off-
straints. The normals to two planes are forced to sets are displayed in the main work window. Click
point in opposite directions by selecting a “Con- on the z-offset of 4.5 inches, and type in a new off-
straint Type” of “Mate Offset” before starting the set of 8.5 inches. The change is completed by se-
third constraint. Specify an offset of 4.5 inches for lecting “Regenerate” from the “MODIFY ASSY”
the last constraint. Then, click on the “OK” but- menu, followed by “Automatic” from the “PRT
ton at the bottom of the “Component Placement” TO REGEN” menu.
dialogue box. Close the “COMPONENT” menu The pin should now have been moved as per
by selecting “Done / Return” at the bottom of your request. Manipulate the “View” commands
the menu. to see the move clearly for yourself. Click “Done”
Save your assembly by selecting “Save” from on the “MODIFY ASSY” menu and “Done / Re-
the “File” pull-down menu. Finally, choose turn” on the “ASSEM MOD” menu to return
“View” from the menu bar and “Repaint” from to the main “ASSEMBLY” menu. If you exit
the resulting pull-down menu to clean up your Pro/ENGINEER without saving the modified po-
display. You can make your assembly appear sition, the pin will be returned to its original lo-
more realistic by temporarily turning off the dis- cation the next time you open this assembly file.
play of the datum planes and axes and shad- You can gain some appreciation for the time-
ing the view. The resulting assembly should saving potential of CAD tools by appraising the
appear similar to Fig. 29. You can gain an previous assembly procedure. Note how little in-
appreciation for the visualization capabilities of put was required to assemble previously-designed
Pro/ENGINEER by spinning your assembly to parts. Consider the time that would be required
see all of its sides. to create an equivalent assembly drawing using a
Once you have defined the basic constraints manual drafting board!
for an assembly, they are easy to modify. As In closing this section, several suggestions are
an example, we will temporarily move the pin made for creating robust and flexible assembly
straight out of the hole. The pin position is mod- models.
ified by selecting “Modify” from the “Assembly” First, I recommend that you build all assem-
menu, followed by “Mod Assem” from the “AS- blies by positioning new parts with respect to
SEM MOD” menu. A “MODIFY ASSY” menu is those datum planes wherever possible. Further-
then raised with “Modify Dim” preselected, and more, utilize the datum planes defined as the first
a “MODIFY” menu is raised with “Value” pre- features of each individual part in your assembly
selected. Choose “Query Select”. constraints. Following this approach minimizes
Click on the pin. If you do not receive a mes- the danger of your assembly being corrupted as
sage similar to: “Showing DEMO ASSEM com- you make changes on the part models included in
c R. Chase, 2001 27
that assembly. Fourth, generally try to limit your definition of

Second, if you are creating a complex assembly, assembly constraints to “Align Offset” and “Mate
break it up into several simpler sub-assemblies. Offset”. Pro/ENGINEER supports many addi-
Pro/ENGINEER allows you to pull in assemblies tional constraints, some which are quite elegant.
as components in a new assembly, so packaging For example, the “Insert” constraint allows you
groups of parts in sub-assemblies is straightfor- to align the axis of a pin with the axis of a hole.
ward. However, I recommend that you don’t generally
If you include several sub-assemblies in a utilize these constraints, unless your design intent
main assembly, differentiating between the da- strongly requires it. The reason is that it locks the
tum planes of the different assemblies can be assembly definition of a part with a part, which
confusing. However, you can change the names increases the chances of corrupting your assembly
of the datum planes used as the base for each if either of the parts is changed.
sub-assembly29 . Select “Modify” from the “AS- Pro/ENGINEER also supplies an “Align” con-
SEMBLY” menu, then “Datum/Axis” from the straint, which is identical to “Align Offset”, ex-
“MODIFY” menu, then select that datum plane cept that the offset is automatically set to zero.
whose name is to be changed. A small window Similarly, a “Mate” constraint can be used in lieu
entitled “Datum” will appear at the top right of of a “Mate Offset” if the offset is zero. I rec-
the screen. You can assign a descriptive name in ommend that you always use “Align Offset” or
the “Name” field. “Mate Offset” in preference to “Align” or “Mate”.
Third, a procedure is recommended for speci- Using the more general “offset” options provides
fying the orientations of datum planes with each you with the flexibility of changing to non-zero
other. As described earlier, “Align Offset” aligns offsets in the future.
the normals of two planes to point in the same di-
rection, and “Mate Offset” aligns the normals of
two planes to point in opposite directions. How- 10 Creating Detail Drawings
ever, datum planes have “positive”, or yellow, and
“negative”, or red, sides. Thus, many permuta- Detail drawings may still be needed to commu-
tions of constraints and normal directions are pos- nicate part intent to a machine shop. They are
sible. For example, the same orientation could be also useful for confirming that you have defined
produced by constraining two yellow normals us- your part’s features consistent with your design
ing an “Align Offset”, or by constraining a yellow intent. Pro/ENGINEER’s drawing facility lets
normal with a red normal using a “Mate Offset”. you readily create a conventional drawing from
I suggest that you always reference the “yel- a previously-defined part or model. This facility
low” normal of both datum planes. Consistently will be introduced by creating a drawing of your
use “Align Offset” to force them to point in the cubic part. A sample finished drawing of the cu-
same direction or “Mate Offset” to force them to bic, actually generated using Pro/ENGINEER, is
point in opposite directions. While this is arbi- illustrated in Fig. 30.
trary, it makes management of the orientations Establishing a drawing from an existing part
less confusing. file is described first. Adding views of the model
Furthermore, try to get in the habit of building to your drawing is then explained. Adjusting
a constraint to “ASM RIGHT” first, followed by Pro/ENGINEER’s “environment” parameters to
a constraint to “ASM TOP”, followed by a con- affect the overall drawing formatting is then de-
straint to “ASM FRONT”. Following this pat- scribed. Automatically generating the dimen-
tern consistently makes it less likely to accidently sions for your drawing is described next. Then,
define an invalid constraint30 . adjusting the display of the dimensions to your
preferences is described. Adding notes is then de-
29 You can also change the names of the datum planes scribed, followed by instructions to save and print
used as the first features of each part. your drawing.
30 As you gain proficiency with assemblies, you can learn
to selectively remove invalid constraints and replace them

If the main work window is not clear, ei-
with correct constraints using the “Component Place- ther quit the window or exit and re-start
ment” dialogue box. Pro/ENGINEER. A new drawing is started by
c R. Chase, 2001
Figure 30: Sample drawing of the cubic.

c R. Chase, 2001 29
selecting “New” from the “File” pull-down menu, ING” menu. Then, select “Move View” from the
then changing the selection in the “New” dia- “VIEWS” menu. You are prompted to select the
logue box from “Part” to “Drawing”. Provide view to move. Click on the view that you wish to
any convenient name, such as “cubic dwg 1”, in move with the left mouse button. You are then
the “Name” field. Pro/ENGINEER automati- prompted for the new location. Place the mouse
cally adds the suffix “.drw” to the drawing file. cursor at the desired location, and press the left
Close the “New” dialogue box by clicking the mouse button to re-locate the view there. You
“OK” button. can repeat the procedure until you are satisfied
A dialogue box labeled “New Drawing” then with the position of the view.
appears. You must ensure that the “Default Note that the sense of the views are preserved.
Model” field reads “cubic.prt”. If it does not, In other words, you can move the right side view
press the “Browse” button next to the “Default to the left or to the right, but you can not move
Model” field. A dialogue box labeled “Open” is the right side view up or down. This is because
then raised, showing all available files from which the right side view must remain aligned with the
drawings can be created. Select “cubic.prt”, then front view. However, you can move the front view
press the “Open” button. up and down, and the right side view will move
We can use most of the default settings in the along with it!
“New Drawing” dialogue box. You are provided A default, or trimetric, view will now be added
with the opportunity to select the drawing size. in the available space in the upper right quadrant
Try to choose a size that will enable showing the of the drawing. This view assists the user to vi-
part at 1:1 scale. We will show you how you can sualize the three-dimensional cubic quickly. You
print large drawings on standard 8.5 X 11 inch will scale it separately from the current views to
paper, if you wish, at the end of this section. The fit it conveniently into the available space. The
default of “c drawing” size will work well for the details are provided below.
cubic. Press the “OK” button at the bottom of Select “Add View” from the “VIEW” menu.
the dialogue box to proceed with defining your Then, select “General” from the top section of
drawing. the “VIEW TYPE” menu, and “Scale” from
The drawing is defined as a series of “views” the fourth section of the “VIEW TYPE” menu.
from your part model. Front, right side and top Finally, select “Done” from the bottom of the
views are created by default. “VIEW TYPE” menu.
Pro/ENGINEER automatically scales the first You are prompted to select a center point for
views so that all views are likely to fit on the pa- the new view. Select a point conveniently cen-
per size selected. A default scale of 0.5 is used for tered in the upper right quadrant. You are
the cubic, as is indicated in the lower left corner prompted for the scale to be used for this view;
of the main work window. reply “0.5”.
However, the cubic is a simple part, so we can The “Orientation” dialogue box is then raised.
display it at full size and still have adequate space Simply press the “Default” button for this view.
for additional views and dimensions. The scale Press the “OK” button to close the “Orientation”
is changed by selecting “Modify” from the “DE- dialogue box, then close the “VIEWS” menu by
TAIL” menu. “Value” is pre-selected from the selecting “Done/Return”. Note that the scale is
resulting “MODIFY DRAW” menu. Move the echoed on the view to clarify that it is different
mouse cursor within the character field “0.500”, from the remaining views.
displayed in the scale label in the lower left of Now, some adjustments are made in
the main work window. Then, click on the scale Pro/ENGINEER’s “environment” parame-
characters with the left mouse button. You are ters to control the formatting of our drawing.
prompted for the desired scale; reply “1.0”. Select Select “Environment” from the “Utilities” pull-
“Done / Return” to close the “MODIFY DRAW” down menu, which will raise an “Environment”
menu. dialogue box with many sections. De-select
If you are displeased with the current location “Datum Planes” to repress display of the default
of the views, you can adjust them at this time. datum planes31 . De-select “Datum Axes” to
Start by selecting “Views” from the “DRAW- 31 As you get more comfortable with making drawings,
c R. Chase, 2001
repress labels attached to the axes of circular confirm your choices by pressing the center mouse
features. De-select display of “Coordinate button. Press the “Apply” button of the “Clean
Systems”. Change the “Display Style” field to Dimensions” dialogue box. After cleaning the di-
“Hidden Line” if it is not shown as the default. mensions, press the “Close” button of the “Clean
Then, close the “Environment” dialogue box by Dimensions” dialogue box, followed by “Done /
pressing the “OK” button32 . Return” on the “TOOLS” menu, to return to the
Notice that axes of the hole are not displayed “DETAIL” menu.
on your current drawing. They can be added to The last few drawing operations demonstrate
the drawing with the following five steps. First, some of the facilities available to you to adjust a
select “Show / Erase” from the “DETAIL” menu. drawing to its optimal appearance. You will first
Second, press the “A 1” (axis) button from the learn how to adjust the display of dimensions to
“Show / Erase” dialogue box. Third, select the your liking. Then, you will learn how to add notes
hole feature from the front view in the main work to your drawing.
window with the left mouse button. The axis for First, you will move a dimension from one view
the hole is now previewed on all views. Fourth, to another. In particular, the height of “4.00” will
click the center mouse button to indicate that you be moved from the front view to the right view.
have completed selecting features. Fifth, click the The association of a dimension with a view is
“Accept All” button in the “Preview” section of changed using the “Switch View” selection from
the “Show / Erase” dialogue box to permanently the “DETAIL” menu. For example, selecting
add the axes to the drawing. “Switch View” causes a prompt for you to se-
The dimensions themselves are now added to lect a detail item whose view is to be switched.
the orthogonal views. Push the “Part” button Move the cursor within the character field of the
in the “Show By” section of the “Show / Erase” “4.00” dimension of the front view, and select it
dialogue box. Then, press the button with the with the left mouse button. Click the center but-
dimension symbol in the upper left corner of ton (or choose “Done Sel” from the “GET SE-
the “Type” section. Select any of the orthog- LECT” menu) to tell Pro / ENGINEER that you
onal views in the main work window with the wish to switch only one dimension. Next, you are
left mouse button. All defining dimensions are prompted to select the new view. Select any point
then added to the views. Click the middle mouse within the right side view with the left mouse but-
button to maintain the display of all dimensions. ton. The height dimension is removed from the
Pro/ENGINEER does not include any redundant front view and added to the right side view.
dimensions; each dimension defined to parametri- The new position of the height dimension and
cally create the geometry is displayed only once. its dimension lines may be undesirable. These can
The dimensions may be placed awkwardly be adjusted using the “Move” command from the
upon their initial display. However, a utility “DETAIL” menu.
is provided to re-space the dimension placement Selecting “Move” causes you to be prompted to
for you automatically. This is available from select a detail item to move. Use the left mouse
the “DRAWING” menu, so start by pushing the button to select anywhere within the character
“Close” button in the “Show/Erase” dialogue field of the “4.00” indicating the height of the
box. cubic. You are then prompted for a new location.
Now, select “Tools” from the “DETAIL” menu You can move the dimension to your liking with
and “Clean Dims” from the “TOOLS” menu. the mouse; clicking the left mouse button drops
You are prompted to select the views or indi- the dimension at its new location. You can repeat
vidual dimensions to clean. Select all three or- the procedure until the dimension is placed to
thogonal views with the left mouse button, then your liking. Press the center mouse button when
you will probably want to utilize the datum planes as in- you are satisfied with the new position.
spection references. We turn them off in our first example You may notice that the dimension leader lines
purely for simplicity. attached to the new height dimension cross the
32 These changes may cause corruption of the display of
your drawing. Remember, the display can be “cleaned

entire right view. You probably prefer that they
up” at any time by selecting “Repaint” from the “View” stop slightly short of the front surface of the right
pull-down menu. view. You can re-position the end of a dimension
c R. Chase, 2001 31
line using the same procedure; query-select can Alternate selections from the “NOTE TYPES”
be very useful in singling out the precise line that menu give you great flexibility on the style of
you may wish to move in a cluttered display! notes that can be added in your drawing. For
You can move the remaining dimensions to ap- example, you can create a note with a leader line
pear similar to Fig. 30. The “Move Text” selec- that can be attached to any feature. Such a note
tion from the “DETAIL” menu moves the char- would be useful for specifying a thread to be cut
acter field of the dimension without moving the into your part.
dimension itself. Your drawing is saved with the “Save” selection
You may want to move the arrows indicating from the “File” pull-down menu, as you would
the diameter of the hole to the outside of the save a part or assembly.
hole. This is done with the “Flip Arrows” se- Printing your drawing is accomplished similar
lection from the “DETAIL” menu. Simply select to the method described in the first part of Sec-
“Flip Arrows”, then select anywhere within the tion 6. However, a slight change is needed if you
character field defining the diameter. The inter- wish to print the “C” size drawing on an “A” size
nal arrows are replaced with an external arrow. (8.5 inch X 11 inch) sheet. Raise the “Print” di-
Finally, the procedure for adding notes to your alogue box by choosing “Print” from the “File”
drawing is introduced. The example will add a pull-down menu in the normal manner. Then,
title, “CUBIC”, to the lower right corner of your push the “Configure” button.
drawing. The note facility is invoked by selecting This raises a “Printer Configuration” dialogue
“Create” from the “DETAIL” menu, followed by box. Change the “Size” field in the “Dimensions”
“Note” from the “DETAIL ITEM” menu. section from “C” to “A”. Then, press “OK” to
A seven-section “NOTE TYPES” menu is now close the dialogue box. Send the print to a file,
raised. The pre-selected entries from the top sec- rather than directly to a printer, by checking
tions are adequate for our simple label, so simply the appropriate boxes within the “Print” dialogue
select “Make Note” from the last section. You box. Complete your print using the standard pro-
are prompted for a location to place the note; se- cedure described in Section 6.
lect any convenient point in the lower right corner Pro/ENGINEER drawings are fully associa-
of the drawing with the left mouse button in the tive. Therefore, if you make any changes to your
main work window. part, these changes are also reflected in the as-
You are now prompted to enter the note. Fur- sociated drawings. Conversely, if you update a
thermore, a menu of commonly-used drafting parametric dimension in a drawing, this update
symbols is raised for your convenience. You can is reflected in the original part definition.
type standard characters directly from the key-
board, or select the special symbols from the
menu, at will. If you were to select a special sym- 11 Epilogue
bol from the menu, its character equivalent would
be included in the message line. This tutorial is intended to acquaint you with a
Type the label “CUBIC” from the keyboard. basic set of functions of Pro/ENGINEER in a
Press the “Enter” key. When you do so, you are very short amount of time. You should now have
again prompted to enter the note. This is to en- sufficient skill to create simple new parts, combine
able you to define a note with multiple lines, when them into assemblies, and generate conventional
needed. Definition of the note is terminated by engineering drawings from them.
pressing the “Enter” key on a blank line33 . The However, this tutorial has actually introduced
label “CUBIC” is then displayed on your draw- only a small portion of the total functionality of-
ing34 . Select “Done/Return” to close the “NOTE fered by Pro/ENGINEER. As you gain experi-
TYPES” menu. ence, make a point of experimenting with new
commands. For example, don’t feel constrained
33 You may need to move the mouse cursor explicitly into
to create all parts as extrusions or revolutions;
the text input field for the “Enter” key to be recognized try your hand at a blend or a sweep!
on the blank line.
34 If necessary, you can refine the position of the note We hope this tutorial has demonstrated that
using the “Move” selection from the “DETAIL” menu. Pro/ENGINEER is a very powerful tool for engi-
c R. Chase, 2001
neering design. Practice is an excellent way to be-

come more comfortable with its facilities. Study
the documentation while experimenting with new
tools. Additionally, you may eventually want to
attend a short course offered by Parametric Tech-
nology Co. to learn more about Pro/ENGINEER
“style” and advanced features.
Have fun!!!

A Beginner's Guide To Pro ENGINEER

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A Beginner's Guide To Pro ENGINEER

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A Beginner’s Guide to Pro/ENGINEER

bly by combining several parts is described. Fi-

Tool bar Model tree on/off button

Menu help line

Figure 1: Basic screen layout of Pro/ENGINEER

Figure 2: The layout of the web-based help page.

Figure 5: Start of context-sensitive help for the

2.2 Context-Sensitive Help

2.3 Additional documentation

but more extensive. This text is also available

Figure 7: Default datum planes.

(red face, RIGHT) (yellow face, RIGHT)

(yellow face, TOP) sketcher

Figure 9: Empty sketcher display.

sketching plane to “zoom in” on this area. The

sketching window to its default size by selecting “View”

Figure 11: Sketching the cross-section of the cubic base feature.

Figure 13: Suggested dimensions for the rectangular cross section.

the “direction indicated by the arrow”. Note that

User Tip 2: Exit Pro/ENGINEER regularly!

I highly recommend that you “Save” a part pe-

an error occurs. In addition, they can be used to set up

directory is in all small letters. “purge” command to be recognized.

You can appreciate the visualization power of

6 Printing from Pro / ENGI- a “Destination” of “postscript”. If you wish to

Next, examine line 13, which declares the “Pa-

Figure 16: Adding a through hole to the cubic.

User Tip 6: Use Trimetric Views to Select Geom-

Left−click mouse about here

this point. You could revolve a rectangular cross-

2 Start closure line here

End closure line here

Figure 23: Closing the profile.

fine a line segment extending from the left edge of

3) Select OD line with left mouse button

4) Place dimension in a convenient location

Figure 25: Defining the diameter of the pin body.

Figure 27: Desired dimensions for the pin.

possibilities for creating assemblies, are provided

Figure 28: Initial appearance of work window

that assembly. Fourth, generally try to limit your definition of

to selectively remove invalid constraints and replace them

Figure 30: Sample drawing of the cubic.

your drawing. Remember, the display can be “cleaned

neering design. Practice is an excellent way to be-

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