We observe a clear tendency that traditional 2D drawings are replaced by 3D models in manufacturing companies. The advantages are obvious: If 3D CAD systems are used anyway, the derivation of a 2D drawing is an additional effort that usually cannot be automated. Considering that CAD designs are frequently changed, one understands the desire to avoid this effort. Therefore, an attempt is made to store the information, that makes up a 2D drawing, in a 3D model. This includes metadata in the title block, various views, sections, dimensions and tolerances. For all this there are suitable counterparts in 3D: Metadata can be placed as free text blocks (billboards) in a 3D scene. The 3D models can be provided with product manufacturing information (PMIs) such as surface finishes and tolerances, which are linked to a specific object or part geometry (feature). 3D models can also be dimensioned for this purpose. To prevent the display from becoming too confusing due to a large number of PMIs, views (sometimes called captures) can be created. They may show only a part of the model, rotated to a certain position and orientation, with only a fraction of the manufacturing information.
To make PMIs easier to read, we have introduced a new option in 3DViewStation to give the texts a background, similar to our text-annotations (Markups) and dimensions.
It is important to know that PMIs do not have a background and therefore may be more difficult to read if they are e.g. in front of a geometry. This is usually only a problem if you display the 3D model with all PMIs or if you rotate and zoom freely. In contrast to this, the PMIs are usually positioned well readable in predefined PMI views.
Besides semantic PMIs there are also graphical PMIs. These are from the early days and are slowly disappearing. Here there is only a collection of lines that are readable for us humans. But in this case there are no text objects and therefore no possibility to provide them with a background.
