In most cases, you can choose from several construction methods, picking the one that is best for your particular design situation. These include highly automatic and highly interactive methods of creating geometry. You also can sketch both linear and non-linear profiles with various types of features, including notches, fillets, and several types of slots.

Another powerful design tool is the ability to combine pieces of geometry into objects of varying complexity and power. The most powerful of these, components, can be stored on disk for use in multiple part files, with links that allow components to be automatically updated every time you open your part.

Parametric Drafting
Parametric Drafting adds intelligence to your design by letting you apply geometric constraints to the geometry and relational control to the dimensions. Relational technology is particularly useful when multiple designs are based on a parent design (family-of-parts projects) and when a design is frequently adjusted or revised during the course of product development.

The value of this added intelligence is that, any time you change the value of a relational dimension, every view in the entire drawing is updated automatically. This is because critical design relationships are embedded in the drawing itself and are always enforced. 

Drawing Layout
To help you create your drawings, ANVIL EXPRESS provides an unsurpassed set of dimensioning and annotation tools. You can, if you wish, create a drawing by manually defining the views and annotation, just as if you were working with pen-and-paper or a basic mechanical-drawing package, because ANVIL EXPRESS lets you apply dimensions, etc., directly to your model, in any view.

However, the Drawing Layout function provides a faster, better way to create production-quality drawings. With Drawing Layout, the system shows you exactly what your drawing will look like each step of the way. To add a view to your drawing, you just choose a view of your 3-D model, position it in the layout, resize it if necessary, and then add your annotations. You can create "paper-only" geometry if needed, without affecting your 3-D model, and you can selectively hide geometry to clarify the views in your drawing. Styles and templates help you automate the drawing process and automatically enforce your company's drafting practices.

Best of all, your Drawing Layout is fully associated with your 3-D geometry: if you change the model, you can update your drawing automatically.

Because ANVIL EXPRESS is designed for multinational use, the Design Drafter module supports all the major national drafting standards:

• ASME 1994
• ANSI 1982
• ANSI 1973
• BSI
• DIN
• JIS

Changing from one standard to another is a simple point-and-click operation, as is changing the units of measurement between metric and English.

Geometric Analysis
To supplement its extensive set of design and drafting functions, the Design Drafter module includes some basic CAE functions for geometric analysis. These enable you to:

• Display data about the entities in your database
• Examine the relationships between geometric entities
• Study the properties of planar areas within your design

So don't be left behind. Register to get your free 30-day trial disk.