Design Checker

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The Design Checker is a tool that enables you to increase the quality of your drawings and reduce costs and time through an early detection of errors in the design. You can auto-check your drawings for their compliance with specific construction guidelines; it detects, for example, invalid features, incorrect bolting sets, dummy parts, and much more. If any errors are detected, HiCAD issues an appropriate message and suggests corrections.

A number of checks with cannot be modified has been predefined by the ISD. However, administrators or users with programming skills can define their own checks and use them in the Design Checker. The checks are based on the HiCAD .NET API and can be formulated in the programming languages C# or Python. This is the same method that is used for the definition of rules and constraints for Design Variants.

When you call the function, the Design Checker dialogue window will be displayed:

HiCAD checks the active drawing or assembly. Activate the desired option.

	Use this button to start the check. All checks specified in the Available checks field.
	This symbol replaces the start symbol while the check is being performed. If you click on the symbol, the check will be cancelled.
	Use this button to close the dialogue window.

Select the checks that you want to perform and click the to execute the checks. The current state of the check is indicated by the progress bars in the dialogue, separately for the currently performed check and the total progress for all checks.

The results of the checks will be shown in the Test results pane.

Results

The symbols have the following meaning:

	No errors or warnings have been detected.
	Errors or warnings have been detected.
	The check could not be performed (e.g. if the script belonging to the check was faulty).

Click the symbol to obtain more detailed information on the test results.

Expand test results

The symbols have the following meaning:

	An error has been detected.
	No errors have been detected.
	Warning issued, but no severe errors detected.

If you double-click an entry of the result list, the corresponding part will be marked in the drawing as well as in the ICN.

Important note:

In addition to the checks that were predefined by the ISD, you can also define your own checks and use them in the Design Checker. These checks need to be based on the HiCAD .NET API and must be provided as Python scripts. User-specific checks should only be defined by administrators or users with sound knowledge of the HiCAD API and Python script creation. The availability of checks in the Design Checker as well as the configuration of the tree structure of the checks can be specified in the DesignChecks.XML file.

The following checks have been predefined by the ISD:

General checks
Incorrect boltings in design variants
Empty/hidden views
Dummy parts (parts without geometry)

Feature checks
Parts with errors in features
Parts with deactivated features
Parts with outdated feature logs
Parts without feature log
Parts with 'Insert feature' item not at log end

Steel Eng. checks
Beams/profiles longer than 12 m

Sheet Metal checks

Currently there are three types of bend zones in HiCAD:

old Sheet Metal parts (from older HiCAD versions) with segmented surfaces as bend zones
old Sheet Metal parts with segmented cylindrical bend zones
new Sheet Metal parts with cylindrical bend zones

You can use the Sheet Metal checks to check your drawing or individual parts for:

Segmented bend zones of the old type
Different bend zone types within one Sheet Metal part

Special checks
Parts with 'Move points, In rectangle' feature
Parts with 'Plate from 3-D part' feature (parts that have been created with the same-named Steel Engineering function).
Mirrored parts
Mountability check for boltings. It will be checked whether the bolts can be pulled out without causing collisions, and whether a tool for bolts and nuts will have enough space. The mounting will be considered possible, if the tool can be moved collision-free when turning either the bolt or the nut.

Further data structure checks can be found in the Check pull-down menu.