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Add Bounding Surfaces to Your Bounding Boxes
By Mark Zaveson of Motorola Inc.
When designing our master models, bounding box datum curves are among the first few features we create. They become dimensional anchors and are referenced by most successive model features, and are useful for capturing design intent. You can use bounding boxes to flex, shrink or grow your model to make quick modifications to size. This flexing is also a good way to test the model’s robustness.
What’s more, by adding surfaces within your bounding box curves, you not only increase the box’s ability to be referenced by datum points and datum axes, but also decrease the number of features needed to do it!
1. Before creating any model geometry, build two datum curve boxes that envelope the overall part size: one in the mid-plane surrounding the profile-view of your model, and one in the mid-plane surrounding the plan-view. Two of the end-curves of the plan-view bounding box should align with two of the end-curves of the profile-view bounding box.
2. Create a flat surface within the bounds of the bounding box that you just made.
3. Now create a datum axis normal-to-plane of the bounding box and dimensioned to the flat surface EDGES.
The datum axis must be dimensioned to a plane OR an edge. Dimensioning to one of the bounding box curves won’t work and you can’t “make-datum” on the fly. The flat surfaces provide the necessary edges to tie your datum axis and points to your bounding boxes. 
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About the Author...
Mark Zaveson is a senior staff mechanical designer at Motorola Inc., Boynton Cellular Design Center in Boynton Beach, FL, USA. He can be reached at mark.zaveson@
motorola.com.
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