Alignment required question

[[Ti...]]

 I learned from a decade of parametric CAD modeling the value of a hierarchy of parametric dimensioning.

I have my own opinion on this question, but I'd like to see what you all think.

If you do a section cut and apply an alignment, then make two lines, then an endpoint on each line, then a line from each endpoint:

section cut -> two lines -> two end points -> 2 point line

My opinion is the section cut and two lines should have the same 'alignment required' selected. Because the two end points are children of the line parents they should be parametrically tied to the lines location so I don't think they should have an alignment. And the same holds true for the 2 point line as it is a child of the previous end points so it must travel with the end points in location.

Do you agree with this or would you select some alignments for child features? I've had to edit some programs with a network of hard to understand alignments which I ended up starting over.

[[Ti...]]

I'm asking this question b/c I don't understand the 'whats new' for 2023 about the Analyze consistency for required alignments example given.

https://techguide.zeiss.com/en/zeiss-inspect-2023/article/cmd_sys_analyze_consistency_for_required_alignment.html

 

In the example given you have two points with alignment and a line that is dependent also with an alignment

It states that you accidentally uncheck alignment required for one of the points. Then it states to solve this you can leave the point unchecked and simply uncheck the line alignment required.

I don't understand this b/c then you have one point with an alignment and another point without one. I don't have data to back up my opinion, but I could see that going bad.

[[Be...]]

Hi Tim,

the Tech Guide explains it quite good: If you have ensured the correct settings for 'Required alignment' during the construction everythin is fine and you don't need this function at all. Also the default settings during construction of the 'Required alignment' flag does not violate this consistency. But if someone modifies the 'Required alignment' manually into an inconsistent state in such a way that a prerequisite element has no 'Required alignment' flag set and a dependent element has a 'Required alignment' flag you are in trouble. Sometimes the elements itself or the reports where they are listed are uncalculated and you don't find a reason for it how to fix it. In the past these projects were sent to us and we had to analyze these problems manually.

With the new functionality you are able to analyze such kind of problems for yourself. Nevertheless, we can't know in which way you like to modify the 'Required alignment' flag in regards to the hierarchy of your elements and you have to specify it in regards to your use case. From my personal point of view I would recommend to to this manually  and to use the dialog only as help to identify the objects which have an inconsistent setting. But in the end this is up to our customers. And yes you are right: may be some points still keep their 'Required Alignment' flag but we can't judge it if this point should still keep their 'Required alignment' flag or not. Keep in mind that this point could have different successors which need a 'Required alignment' flag and unsetting this flag would lead to further problems.

From former posts I know that you  need more oftern the opportunity to set the 'Required alignment' flag. But as I already pointed out this is not true for all of our customers and depends heavily on your use case.

In regards to your first question: In my opionion 99% of all application cases where you set the 'Required alignment' (manually) you should use the same alignment, but there are some use cases (or data constellations) where you need even different alignments (really, really seldom). One simple example from the past: Two touching spheres which needed a different 'Required alignment' to find local bumps, from the line between these spheres we got a direction and then this direction was used to create a touching segment point which had a further different required alignment to touch the correct shape. 

Regards,

Bernd

Edited November 17, 2023