Intent Manager or Sketcher
Intent Manager or Sketcher
(OP)
Doing a bit of a poll here. I work for a large company, who explicitly states that their Pro/E users be trained in Sketcher (not intent manager). Though Sketcher (old style, pre-2000i2) forces the user to strengthen all dims and forces him/her to incorporate design intent, i do not see the advantage of sketcher over intent manager. Simply put, i feel as though Intent Manager is much faster, and has the tools available to capture proper design intent. (Granted, it is possible to create real sloppy sketches with Intent Manager). I want to settle this in my own mind, and find out how many users are using what. your feedback would be much appreciated. thanks.





RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
Take care & have fun!
Kevin
"Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A. Edison
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
i do agree with you however, that learning sketcher would be an appreciable asset for intent manager usage.
thanks.
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
im4cad
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
I believe that "design intent" is the main thing that needs to be accurately captured when building a model, and models which haven't captured it properly are more troublesome than those which have.
I bet we agree that a more appropriate thing for a company with a parametric cad system to focus on would be "The meaning of design intent, and how to model it properly." The ablility to explicitly constrain/dimension sketches exists in both intent manager and sketcher. Which one you use to do that is really a matter of preference and a silly thing to mandate. Manually strengthening a dimension which doesn't well capture design intent leaves you in the same place as allowing IM to do it for you.
One way I found to have more success sketching with IM is the greater use of construction lines, arcs, circles, points etc... By first sketching and adding constraints to these entities first, and THEN sketching the "real" geometry, IM practically snaps right to everything you want.
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
I would suggest that experienced IM users re-learn sketcher. i had to do this, and was actually quite suprised at how strong the created sketches were. sketcher really forces the user to incorporate design intent into created sketches. how? because it doesn't put in weak dims, and will only regenerate once the user has applied all the necessary dims inorder to fully constrain the sketch. this might be the problem with IM: the fact that weak dims are initially applied. i mean, how many sketches do we make every day? i'm sure we are all guilty of highlighting a weak dim in IM and doing the old 'ctrl-t' (strengthen). the problem here is that it is not obvious in IM whether a dim is applied to (parallel) lines or to verticies.
anyway, i'll stop here for fear of killing the topic completely. i guess the moral of the story is to insure that your are dimensioning the correct entities. and if you are a new user, understanding how IM works is best learnt via sketcher. enough said? ...
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
1) IM is like a calculator - in order to be allowed to use one you should know the workings behind the machine. We'll all be out of job when PTC adds the "Design Widget", "Fix Widget" and "Produce Widget" icons - Oh, sorry missed "Package and Ship Widget".
2) The company isn't forcing people to use sketcher, just to learn it. (That would be like forcing all of us to use long division and show our work.)
3) In IM you should lock dimensions if you don't want them changed while moving items, make 2 lines // if you want them //... use the constraints, do not rely on IM to do your job for you.
4) Once and a while when redefining failed features IM can not open the sketch and Pro/E defaults to sketcher mode. If you don't know sketcher you are now in delete mode, not redefine mode.
5) During redefine it is sometimes faster to fix a sketch in sketcher. (If references are lost on a large Use Edge or Offset Edge sketch for instance.)
6) Why did they not include Trim/Extend in IM? I used that all the time in Use Edge situations - now I have to add a dimension, delete the constraint, change the dimension... I want Trim/Extend back - not everything about IM is rose colored.
Chris Grace
Product Development Engineer
Sterilite Corp.
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
I would agree with this, -especially as I haven't yet found all the features from sketcher in Intent Manager.
However I believe that there is one major advantage with Intent Manager - you can specify constraints BEFORE you have completed the sketch. Therefore the sketch follows your design intent rather than the assumed design intent from ProE. You can also delete constraints, and specify which features you want the sketch to reference.
Possibly the question you should be asking - of the person who told you to only teach sketcher is - Why?
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
how do you hide weak dimensions in IM? I'd be very keen to know this one.
Cheers
Hayden
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
In New Sketcher you can go to the
Utilities > Sketcher Preferences dialog window
I think the first of the 3 Tabs is the constraints list and you can uncheck the show weak dimensions option. The weak dims will still exist however if the sketch is not fully constrained.
Hope you find this useful
Michael
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
1) Don't take a job you aren't qualified for.
2)Don't take a job you aren't trained for.
3)Don't complain about great software because you are a poor user or your company doesn't properly train you.
Basically just take some personal responsibility for knowing what the heck you are doing.
Even at it's worst IM will reduce the time it takes for even the lowliest of users to complete a sketch.
To those of you who get it........You've earned your positions and pay scale. To those who don't get it...You are diluting the market of professionals and causing a reduction in the salary of those of us who do get it. Try autocad, I hear it's got a good sketcher.
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
I don't work for PTC or sell the software, but I do know that test scores for new users learning Wildfire are much better than any previous version.
So the Intent Manager is perfectly good enough, as long as people are taught what it's doing.
To use the previous analogy of a calculator. You do need to know WHAT it's doing, but you don't need to know HOW it's doing it.
Bruce Jackson
www.jscad.co.uk
RE: Intent Manager or Sketcher
I would suggest and have suggested to people I teach to take a look at it.
For IM if you know where the Tab & Shift keys are and have a RMB Pro/E makes your time in sketcher seem like a Vacation
Catia makes simple sketches hard because there is no = length option and vertices have to be told to show.
Pro/E is so much better
Michael