Measuring Geometric Properties

Measures let you provide geometric information about objects.

The context determines whether or not the measure will be persistent.

Before you begin:

The task below assumes that the created measure will be persistent.

In a context in which non-persistent measures are taken, the measure is not added in the specification tree. Furthermore, when clicking OK in the Measure Item or Measure Between dialog box, the measure disappears.

  1. Select Measure Item in the Review Creation toolbar.

    Several things now happen:

    • The arrow pointer changes to the measure pointer . Depending on the position of the measure pointer, it will also show a symbol indicating the object you can select with it. For a list of all the measure pointers, see Pointer Transformation.

    • The Measure Item dialog box appears with the Specifications tab activated and Customize tab grayed out:



  2. Move the measure pointer over the geometry.

    As you do this, the symbol to the bottom right of the pointer changes to reflect the geometry type and to help you with your selection. Also, dynamic highlighting of geometric entities helps you locate the item to be selected.



  3. You may care to narrow the detection criteria to be used.

  4. Click when the pointer is above the object whose geometric properties you want to measure.

    Several things now happen:


    • The selected object is highlighted in the geometry and in the specification tree.

    • An information box appears, providing information about the properties of the selected geometry. Drag this box to move it. A full list of detectable objects is provided in Pointer Transformation. Here are some examples:

      A plane

      A surface

      A volume

    • The Customize tab and More Results >> section in the Measure Item dialog box are now activated and both the geometry type and name of the object you selected are indicated in the Selection field.

    • A Measure item is created in the specification tree under the Notes branch with the name Measurexxxx.y where xxxx is the selected geometry type and y the number of measures made under the same slide and for the same type of geometry:



      Important:
      • The symbol appears when a measure is created in design mode.

        The symbol appears when the measure is not associated with the selection you made and will therefore not be affected by any modifications you make to the selection.

        The symbol appears with an associative Measure, if the linked geometry is not in design mode.

      • To rename the Measure, right-click it and change the name in the Properties dialog box.

  5. Using the same method as just described, select several geometric entities:



    Important:
    • You cannot multiselect entities of different types. After your first selection, you will only be able to select a similar entity. The symbol appears in those areas where no selection is possible.
    • With the Multiple Measure mode you can create several measurements independently of each other without clicking the Measure Item several times . Each click on a measurable element will create a new Item measurement.
    • Note that whereas for a single selection the information box is directly attached by an arrow to the selected entity, for a multiselection it is attached to the intersection of the dashed lines coming from the center of each selected entity.

    After the second selection, the contents of the Selection field change to show only the number of selected entities.

  6. To see a detailed list of your selections, click the button to the right of the Selection field.

    The Measure Selections dialog box appears:



  7. To remove any selections in the list, select the unwanted line(s) and click Remove. You can also do this by reclicking the selected entity in the geometry.

    Note that you cannot remove all selections.

    At each selection (or selection removal), the related information changes interactively in the More Results>> section:



    This information also appears in the information box:



    The corresponding measures are added under the Notes item in the specification tree:



  8. Click OK.

  9. To edit an existing measure, you have three options:


    • Double-click the measure in the specification tree.

    • Double-click the information box in the geometry

    • Right-click the measure in the specification tree and, in the contextual menu that appears, select [measure_name] object>Definition... .

    Once created in the specification tree, the selections of non-associative measures cannot be modified. If you click the button, a warning message appears: If you click Yes, all the selections will be removed from the list in the Measure Selections dialog box. You can now make new selections. If you click No, the selection list remains unchanged. Note that you can reopen any Measure to access the Customize tab and the Results section.

Important:

  • You can right-click the measure in the specification tree or in the geometry to access additional commands.

  • Associativity between a measure result and geometry created using the Create geometries command in CATIA V5 is not migrated.

  • Slides are self-sufficient. Associative measures may therefore have different values in different slides. Note that you cannot change selections. If you do, you will receive a warning message.

  • You can also measure geometric properties in the specification tree using the same procedure as described above: