Some most useful Material Addition and Material Removal Features of Pro/Engineer

In pro engineer, the material addition and removal features are combined in nature; means the feature is having both material addition as well as material removal options. For example, the extrude is having a toggle button by means of which, it may be either a material addition or a removal process.

• Extrude: For starting extrude tool, path is as follow: insert>extrude. The window will look like below:

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Notice the placement tab, by clicking this tab the sketch required for creating material addition/removal feature could be drawn.

By clicking the solid or surface, extrusion as solid or as surface will be produced respectively.

Depth type enables how the depth of the extruded feature would be, whether the depth will be at both the direction of sketching plane or up to the next surface or blind etc.

For blind depth, the value of depth needs to be specified at the depth field.

By Material side option material addition/removal side is decided.

By toggling Remove material button, either the material is added or removed.

Pause button could be used if some other features (like, datum plane, axis etc.) need to be created at the middle of the extrude feature creation.

Preview button shows the preview of the feature.

By using ok or cancel button the created extrude feature is accepted or rejected respectively.

• Revolve: Revolve feature is used for addition/removal of materials around a defined axis. Insert>revolve path need to be followed for creating revolve feature. Almost all the buttons/options are similar to extrude except in the sketch for revolve feature axis must to be created and around the axis the sketch will be revolved.

• Sweep: For creating a curved rod or curved beam kind of features, the sweep option could be used. For creating sweep, a trajectory and a section is required. Trajectory may be created in sweep itself or may be created earlier and used in sweep. By clicking insert>sweep, a dialogue box will be appeared like below:
  

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sketch traj option is used for creating the trajectory in sweep itself; on the other hand select traj is the option for selecting an earlier created trajectory. Section option is useful to sketch the section required for creating the section for the sweep.

• Blend: Features which are having at least two parallel surfaces and the other surfaces are joining these two parallel surfaces could be created by blend operation. Typically by insert>blend, blend feature could be started and the window looks like below:

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Attributes like smooth or straight decides the types of transitions between the two parallel surfaces. Section option allows creating the sections, after drawing one section; toggle section needs to be used to draw the next section and so on.

• Swept blend: Benefits of sweep as well as blend is combined at swept blend feature. Suppose you have multiple sections at different distance of your model and at the same time these multiple section follows a centre curve, then you can think of using swept blend option. For creating swept blend, one needs to follow:

Insert>swept blend and finally the following window will appear:

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Origin Traj is used for defining the central trajectory (curve), this can be created in swept blend itself or could be used any earlier created curve.

Sections are used for creating different cross sections of the swept blend feature.