Before You Begin With Drafting

This topic introduces the main concepts that you need to understand before you begin using Drafting.

This page discusses:

What is Drafting?

Drafting enables you to create drawings containing views which result from specifications in 3D parts, 3D products, and even .model documents. These specifications can correspond either to the whole 3D part/product, or to an element contained in this 3D part/product.

Such views, also known as generative views, are associative to the 3D. You can generate dimensions in views, which are also associative.

View generation supports latest functionality such as:

  • Flexible assemblies (also known as PMR, Positionable Mechanical Reference). The assembly is represented, dimensioned, annotated, etc. taking into account its flexible position.
  • Volumic filters and perforating filters (PVS). See Product Finder User's Guide for more information.

Projected 3D Representations

Drafting enables you to define the type of 3D representation that you want to project in views. It is recommended to do so before you actually start generating views.

You can perform the following actions:

  • Mainly through the use of product filters. Product filters offer advanced possibilities, enabling you to define criteria (such as attribute values, or volumic criteria) to specify the subset of a product to be represented in the view. When creating a view by selecting a filter, only the products or representations that meet this criteria are projected. See About Views with Filters for more information.
  • Or through the 3D extracted representations option. This option lets you specify whether you want to create views from all design representations (having Nature attribute of their corresponding 3D shapes set to Definition), from only the first level of design representations (surrounded in blue in the example below), or from all 3D representations (having Nature attribute of their corresponding 3D shapes set to Definition/Specification/Representation) in session.



    You can define this option in Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Mechanical Systems > Drafting > View section, under View Generation. For more information, see View.

    You can check what type of 3D representation view was created, by right-clicking the view, selecting Properties and clicking the Generation tab. The 3D extracted representations property indicates whether the current view was created from all design representations, from only the first level of design representations, or from all 3D representations in session. This property cannot be modified. See Generation Properties for more information.