Greetings everyone. I'm working through the Shark FX learning curve and have stumbled accross a functionality issue that is not making sense to me from what I read in the manual so I'm hoping to get some clarification here so I can move on to other things. The issue I'm having is getting under/over and fully defined objects and their colors to function the way the manual says they will intuitively.

I cannot get a sketch fully defined enough for the object to appear in green as the manual says it should (either by manually dimesioning the object or using the auto constraint tool from the tool bar).

The manual also says the auto constraint tool will apply smart dimensions to an object automatically as well, which I also cannot seem get to function as described. I must be missing something.

Thanks in advance,

Todd

No, what I'm refering to is the color of 2D objects supposedly changing from blue (underdefined) to green (fully) to dark yellow (overdefined) by the system intuitively as you draw. I can draw a fully defined rectangle for instance and the object color will not change to green (the default color), but stay the standard punch blue color. If I purposely overdefine any object with redundant dimensions, then the dimension itself is displayed in the dark yellow color, but not the object itself as the manual explains. I hope this explanation makes more sense.

Thanks,

Todd

I guess I'm not doing a good job of describing the conflict...the following description of part of the functionality of the constraint manager feature was copied and pasted directly from page 191 of the user guide:

"Under and Over Constrained Geometry-A major feature of the constraint management system is that it is designed to handle under and over constrained data in such a way that the user is helped to build a properly defined object interactively.
Under-constrained data is defined as data having insufficient dimensions and logical constraints to define the geometry uniquely. The default under-constrained object color is blue.
Over-constrained data is defined as data having too many or conflicting dimensions and legal constraints. The default over-constrained object color is dark yellow.
The fully constrained object color is green.
Under, over, and fully-defined object default colors can be changed in the File:Preferences:DCM category"

There are three pictoral examples just below the above paragraph in the user guide that depict these object color changes as they should appear as you draw/constrain objects. In use, my copy of Shark FX has not functioned as described, especially the part about fully constrained objects automatically changing to green (the factory default color) as they become fully defined/constrained.

Thanks,

Todd

I'm dubious about how functional this 'feature' is. I use constraints occasionally, but I've probably never needed to 'fully' constrain anything, as I've never had to pay attention to the colour alerts. I went about trying to 'fully constrain' a sketch as the manual describes, and found that it's such a sweet spot that I wasn't able to find it.....autoconstraint gives me underconstrained, so I throw as many more constraints as I think might be applicable, and it eventually reaches a 'can't do this one', without ever passing through a 'Goldilocks' point. Not a useful answer, I know, just my anecdotal experience. The interaction seems limited to a 'No more!' notification, which is as self-evident as the colour change....