Manual Feature Authoring

Manual Feature Authoring gives you control over the features you measure to and from. In Dimensioning Mode, the Features toolbar button lets you author planes and cylinders by hand to complement automatically extracted features. Authored features behave like automatic ones. They can be measured, used as datums, and picked by Flatness, Cylindricity, and Profile. Authoring creates planes and cylinders. Extraction can also return cones, fillets, and chamfers; those are not authored from this workflow. Right-click a feature for the actions that apply to it: a datum, a GD&T check, refine, rename, or delete.

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Requirements

Manual Feature Authoring needs a Feature Set extracted with algorithm v20 or newer. See Feature Extraction. On older extractions, the authoring controls are greyed out and a tooltip explains why. Re-run Feature Extraction on the parent reconstruction to replace that Feature Set with a v20 (or newer) run, then author features on the result.

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When to use Manual Feature Authoring

Use authoring to complement automatic extraction — not to replace it. Typical cases:

• Thin rims that automatic extraction under-represents
• Multiple disconnected components that should belong to one plane
• Small patches that mimic CMM probe points
• Small pins and threaded holes that need a cylinder sized to the real geometry
• Cleanup — delete features you do not want in the scene so measurement and datum work stay focused

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Create planes

Create planes large and small on contiguous and non-contiguous surfaces. Non-contiguous patches can still define a single plane, which is how thin rims and disconnected faces become measurable. Authoring a plane on a rim of a part.

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Create cylinders

Create cylinders large and small, including small pins and threaded holes. Authoring a cylinder on geometry that had uneven edges in automatic feature extraction.

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Refine automatic features

Right-click any automatic feature to adjust it directly. Refinement uses the same membership tools as a feature you created from scratch.

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Paint, erase, and erode

Paint, erase, and erode give full manual control over which surface belongs to the feature:

• Paint — add surface to the feature
• Erase — remove surface from the feature
• Erode — shrink membership inward to drop noisy edges or over-extracted boundary

Use these tools after create or after right-click refine until the feature matches the geometry you will measure.

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Name and promote

Right-click one feature and choose Rename to give it the name the drawing uses. The name can be up to 64 characters. A feature with no name is shown by its kind and number, such as Plane 3. Promote to sidebar puts that feature in the Features group under the feature set, so the surfaces you use often stay listed. Remove from sidebar takes it back off the list. The feature itself is unchanged. Promotion is one feature at a time.

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Delete features

Delete retires a feature so it is no longer offered for measurement, datums, or GD&T. A feature that a measurement or a datum still uses cannot be deleted until that use is removed. The remaining features stay available on the volume.

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Measure and datum from authored features

Once a feature is in the Feature Set, use it like any other primitive:

• Distance, Angle, and Diameter
• Flatness on planes
• Cylindricity on cylinders
• Datums (Plane, Axis, Midplane)
• Profile, Position, Perpendicularity, and Parallelism, when the feature kind is one they accept

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Related pages

• Feature Extraction
• 3D Auto-Dimensioning
• Direct Dimensions
• Flatness
• Cylindricity
• Datum Definition
• Profile
• Voyager Modes
• Voyager Release Notes and Monthly Highlights