About Dress-up Templates

The dress-up template lets you define the content and behavior of a frame and a title block. It may contain geometric elements, text and table annotations, pictures, text templates, editable data such as user text and user parameters, and custom knowledge rules.

This page discusses:

See Also
Creating a Frame or a Title Block Template

Concepts

A dress-up template is created and defined in the drawing template representation using a special drafting view.

Dress-up templates are instantiated in sheets or views as dress-up instance objects. At instantiation, the template content is copied in the target sheet or view (and positioned according to external rules), text templates and knowledge actions are routed automatically to current context, and user can then modify the editable data such as user editable annotations and user parameters.

Dress-up instances have link to the source template which lets you synchronize the changes made to the source template (for example, a new box is created in a title block).

Synchronization adds all the new template elements in the instance, updates existing elements (position, style, content), and deletes the elements that are removed. User data set in the instance is kept intact during synchronization.

Dress-up instances can be independent from their linked template.

Dress-up templates are intended to be used in the context of sheet templates. An additional dress-up template type, Sheet Background Template, is available. It is created implicitly in a sheet template, and lets you handle the sheet background view using dress-up mechanisms. information, see About Sheet Templates.

Organization and Definition

Dress-up templates are aggregated to the support view, which is then aggregated to the parent sheet. These sheets organize the templates in the drawing representation.

Recommendation: Classify the dress-up of same type in the same sheet: a sheet containing title block template definitions and the other sheet containing frames templates.
Notes:
  • The top-level sheet visualization can be used to define frames templates (to match the frame format with a sheet format). It is convenient to classify frame templates of the same format in the same top-level sheet.
  • You can only change the template name through properties.
  • You can copy the dress-up by copying the support view. The target can be in the same or another representation.

    The dress-up template feature itself cannot be copied. The support view must be copied.

Dress-up template can contain either static or dynamic elements:

Static Elements

Static elements are defined in template using regular drafting commands. During a template instantiation and synchronization, the static elements are copied from the template.

Note: Static elements removed from a template can also be deleted from the dress-up instance during the template synchronization.

The following static elements are supported:

Sketch Geometry
You can create the following geometric elements: Point, line, circle, and other conics, such as ellipse and corners.

In a dress-up instance, the geometric elements are copied and the construction elements are hidden.

Geometrical constraints and fix together functionalities are supported.

2D Components
2D component instances are supported in dress-up template. 2D components are copied in the dress-up instance as is, and are linked to the source 2D component reference.
Annotations
You can create the following annotation elements: Text, table, dimension, and so on.

The annotations are copied in the dress-up instance. These are static elements, and thus the content edition is locked.

Dimensions are not shown in dress-up instance. These are mostly used through driven dimensions, as constraint to drive geometry.

The following annotations are not supported: GD&T and arrows.

Labels
Labels are supported in dress-up template. Labels are copied in the dress-up instance as is.

The user editable text and text templates of labels are not supported.

Standard Dress-up
You can create the following dress-up elements: Picture and area fill.

The following dress-up elements are not supported: Threads and center lines.

Arrows are not supported in a dress-up instance.

Dynamic Elements

Dynamic elements are created using specific commands available in the Dress-up Template Definition dialog box.

These elements have the particularity to either let the user to modify textual content in dress-up instance (and retain these changes during synchronization to the source template) or compute them automatically depending on instance context.

Using the position and orientation links between annotations supports effective layout of variable-length text data. These links are kept in dress-up instance.

Recommendation: Set the links and configure text formatting attributes.

User Parameters

Dress-up template lets you create the user parameters.

User parameters are special parameters defined in the template and is synchronized to the dress-up instance. This lets the user to modify the values in the instance.

When used with text annotations and attribute links, you can effectively customize the textual content of dress-up instance with the user data. Additionally, user values set in dress-up instance are retained during instance synchronization. User parameters can be considered as a way to create user defined boxes.

User Parameters Creation

User parameters are intended to be linked by regular text or table annotations through attribute links.

In the Dress-up Template Definition dialog box, click the Manage Template Parameters icon to create the user parameters.

In the Parameter Explorer panel, create new parameters. User parameters must be of type string.

For example, the default value of a parameter must be the name of the parameter (or an abbreviation) enclosed by braces such as "" or <>. This lets you have a better visual identification of their location in the dress-up.

Note: The default parameter value must not be empty. Otherwise, you cannot re-use the parameter as a target of an attribute link.

Link to User Parameter from Text Annotation
The user parameters must be linked to existing text annotations or table cells.

Edit an existing text annotation. Select the Insert Attribute Link command and select the user parameter.

In a dress-up instance, the link between the annotation and the user parameter is kept. This lets the user to customize the dress-up content through user parameter modification.

Template Parameters

You can create template parameters whose value cannot be modified by the user in an instance. They are intended to be modified by internal knowledge rules. See Rules on Parameters and Rules on Context.

Create a new parameter (or copy an existing parameter) in the second parameter set of the dress-up template. This set is not available for direct user modification in the dress-up instance.

Note: It is recommended to insert or create such computed parameters only under the template parameters node, and not under the user parameters node.

These parameters are to be used with knowledge rules. The values of the parameters are lost after synchronization as they are computed by the rules at each synchronization.

User-Defined Annotations

In addition to the static text and table annotations, the dress-up templates let you mark the existing annotations as user-defined. The values of this annotations are editable in the dress-up instance and are kept during the instance or template synchronization.

In the Dress-up Template Definition dialog box, click the Set Annotation as User-Defined icon to mark an existing annotation as user-defined. You can select a text or table annotation. These user-defined annotations are displayed with a green box in the dress-up template.

Apply the command again on the same annotation to unset the editability flag.

It is similar to the Allow modification in Instance functionality in a 2D component, with an additional behavior to keep the annotation style driven by the template during instance or template synchronization. It also takes into account the position or orientation links with other annotations (which is not supported by a 2D component).

Notes:
  • It is different from user parameters (in which the parameters themselves are user editable, and not the annotations).
  • You can mark an annotation as user-defined by selecting an annotation from the current template support view.
  • In user-defined tables, you cannot create variable columns or rows in a dress-up instance.

Text Templates

Text templates can be inserted in a dress-up template. By default, the text templates are automatically routed to the object in a dress-up instance.

If you want to manually route the text template, it has to be marked as user-defined. In this case, it cannot be routed automatically, and the value computed by the user is kept during synchronization to template.

You can also copy an existing text template.

Notes:
  • The display of text templates cannot be changed (For example, Type.Attribute). However, the bounding box is not taken into account for the title block. This lets you place the text freely without impacting title block positioning.
  • Table templates are not supported.

Rule on Parameters

These are knowledge rules that drive the template behavior using the user parameters as input. For example, this functionality can be used to change the display status of a template element depending on a user parameter of type Boolean.

The rules are located under the Template Parameters and Relations node of a dress-up template.

In the Dress-up Template Definition dialog box, click the Create Rule icon to create a rule on parameter.

You can create intermediate template parameters (which are not visible by the user), if needed by the rules.

Rule on Context

These are knowledge actions that drive the template behavior using a contextual object (an object coming from where the dress-up template is instantiated). For example, you can compute a text annotation content using the main sheet, or a custom 3D object.

The rules are located under the Template Parameters and Relations node of a dress-up template.

In the Dress-up Template Definition dialog box, click the Create Rule on Context icon to create a rule on context.

By default, the action has an input argument ContextObject of type Feature. It can be changed to the required context object type.

Rules on context are run automatically at instance creation, synchronization, or local update, using the most appropriate object as ContextObject input.

Text Template and Rules Routing Strategy

Automatic routing of text template and rules on context is done depending on the knowledge type involved. The following types are listed below:

  • DrwView: route to the drafting view containing the dress-up (generally this is the background view).
  • DrwSheet: route to the drafting sheet.
  • ASDSheet: route to the ASD sheet feature itself. Useful to get additional sheet info, such as margins or format.
  • DrwDrawing: route to the drawing root.
  • PLMCoreRepReference: route to the owning representation (mostly drawing). Useful to get the title, description, revision, and so on.
  • PLMCoreReference: route to the owning reference of the drawing. This only works if the drawing representation is not in shared state.
  • VPMReference: route to the represented product of the sheet.
  • VPMInstance: route to the represented product of the sheet, as an instance.
  • ProductOccurrence: route to the represented product of the sheet, as an occurrence.

Note: The usage of sub-types is supported. For example, PLMCoreRepReference=>Drawing, VPMReference=>Piping_Spool, ProdutOccurrence=>Piping_Spool_Occurrence, etc.

The represented product of the sheet is either specified by batches, or considered automatically from the first generative view.

Using the ASDSheet type, you can access everything: the DrwSheet using .Sheet attribute, the DrwDrawing using .Sheet.Owner attribute sequence, the View using .Sheet and scan for the background view, the Represented Product (a ProductOccurrence) using .RepresentedProduct attribute (you may then access the VPMReference or VPMInstance), and the owner Drawing using GetPLMOwner (ASDSheet) function.