I’ve been trying to build a library feature and in the process have discovered many limitations that are not documented.
I wasted a lot of time going through and building many different solutions, only to discover one by one that they wouldn’t work because of one of the below limitations, which are not revealed until you try to create the library feature. I would not have had to waste this time if this information was available. I really think the help documentation should be updated to speak to these limitations; I've sent a request to my VAR so hopefully that gets where it needs to, but in the mean time I wanted to share this information, in hopes it saves someone else the headache.
- “History” of included features are limited to any references/dimensions which are defined in the context of the feature itself and/or the underlying sketch(es) that directly define said feature. Any external references in the underlying sketch (e.g. coincident to a point, tangent to an edge, etc.) are not analyzed for history and will require the user to choose an entity when the library feature is inserted into a part.
- Curves cannot be included as library features. (at least no helices, I haven’t explored other curves).
- Boolean operation features cannot be included as library features. (no combine bodies, no join bodies, no intersect bodies, no delete body features)
- Surface features cannot be included as library features.
That’s all I can think of for now, but there is probably more that I’m forgetting.
Hope it saves someone from this guy:
