With molded parts, it is often useful to determine which way a face is drafted. I use the draft analysis tool, of course, but is nice to be able measure individual faces reliably. With the advent of SW 2009, I have been noticing that I do not get consistent answers from the measuring tool. There is a difference between 2 faces being 91° from each other rather than 89°, but the measure tool will tell me it is 89° either way.

To see what I am talking about, just extrude a rectangle out .100. Then open a new sketch on top of the first extruded feature and extrude a smaller rectangle out .500 and choose to draft it 10°. Do not check the box for draft outward-yet. After this second extrude, measure the flat face and the face that was extruded at 10°. SW tells you 80° when I would expect it to say 100°. Now, the really interesting thing is when I go back and edit the second boss-extrude and tell it to draft outward. Upon meausuring it now it reports an 80° angle between the faces as expected.

My question is: shouldn't the measured angle be reported differently in this example depending on which way I draft it?

Before posting this, I went back and created a similar example part in SW2008, sp5.On this part, the measure tool reports the expected results. 100° with the first extrude and then 80° after editing to reverse the draft.

If anybody has an spr# for this, please let me know what it is. If nobody has noticed this, then I will (gulp) call my VAR and see if I can get them to confirm this bug and report it.

Message was edited by: John Kreutzberger