In order to use the Master Model / Merge technique or the Copy Geom in Pro/Engineer its a good idea to set you models that are inheriting the geometry to Absolute Accuracy versus Relative. to do this you must have a Config.Pro setting "enable_absolute_accuracy" set to yes, then you will see the option to copy the accuracy setting from the master part.

Setting what folder you save to and open from goes beyond setting your working directory in Pro/Engineer; if you set your working directory it normally saves what ever you are working on in that location, but you'll find at times if you browse out of your working directory to grab a table, note or anything then you save your work (for the first save) it will save it in the directory you last opened something from. Below is the Config.pro option that forces saves to your working director by default.

file_open_default_folder working_directory working_directory

In both Wildfire 3 and Wildfire 4 you can use a config option for different ways to select sketcher references; 0,1,2 you can select it how many references Pro/E sketcher will automatically select

sketcher_auto_create_refs

set it to either 0,1, or 2

One quick tip that you can set in your config file to speed up the save as process, when ever you create a part, do the drawing to go along with it (named the same always) and if you place RENAME_DRAWINGS_WITH_OBJECT to BOTH in your config.pro setup file now when you do a save as of the original part you will also get a new drawing to boot, and in a later tip we will go over doing this same thing in an assembly and end up with a whole group of Parts and Drawings for "Free".

Starting with Wildfire 3 PTC added a Sketcher Palette; it includes many shapes such as Polygons of all sorts, Stars with up to 20 points; and some other shapes, but along with this we can customize the palette and ad our own shapes along with our very own tab, and here is how:

to add a Tab to the Sketcher Palette simply browse to:

loadpoint>\text\sketcher_palette

Below is a list of Pro Engineer Configuration files for Wildfire 3.0. including Hidden options. Definitions to come later.

ACAD_EXPORT_LAYERS_WITH_ID (hidden)

ACCURACY_LOWER_BOUND

ACIS_EXPORT_PARAMS

ACIS_EXPORT_UNITS

ACIS_OUT_VERSION

ACROBAT_READER

ACTIVATE_SKETCH_WITH_DFLT

ADD_JAVA_CLASS_PATH

ADD_LOWER_LEVEL_COMPS_TO_LAYER

ADD_TO_LAYER_BY_COMP_NAME (hidden)

ADD_WELD_MP

ADJUST_EXPORT_ACCURACY (hidden)

ADV_ST_FEAT_CONF (hidden)

ADVANCE_COMP_PLACEMENT_UI (hidden)

ADVANCED_INTERSECTION

ADVANCED_RAMP_ALG (hidden)

AEC_PARAMETER_FILE

Pro/Engineer has a ton of ways to get geometry information from one model to another such as publishing your geometry, or copy from other model, one we are covering today is a quick (I call cheating) way to get model geometry from one model to another, I have seen it used to copy surface references from a part into a model to build a tool for making the part. if you assemble your original model into an assembly then assemble a blank part that will become your tool you can 'activate' the blank part and copy surfaces from the original model into you "tool".

Pro Engineer uses various configuration files when it is launched to give you the look, feel, and functions you desire. The first is a config.pro, this is a Text file that stores info such as paths, mapkeys, specific cofiguration settings for your install of Pro/E. Next is the config.win, this is a file that controls more of the look of Pro/E such as what Icons show up and what menus and location of these icons and menus.