Unfortunately this was about 20 years ago, when I started with PTC.
We have changed the Call Management System twice since then (not counting the paper works we had until early 1994). Although in our old database the legacy cases are still recorded, I can only search for the case subject and not through the notes, so I was not able to identify this case.
Either this had been a topic before we started electronic recording or in my description I had not used the most obvious keywords - e.g. I found 117 cases with "section", 23 with "SLA", etc... but none of them was about this topic.
I assume the customer at this time had had a specific, different question and the use case of exporting cross sections for a stereolithographics machine was only background information.
Anyway, it would probably be possible to create auxiliary applications to help you automate this and - as I mentioned before - a trail file could be used as well. However, you can also utilize two other mechanisms:
- You can pattern cross sections to easily create as many of them as you need. If you have pattern section A, you will get A-2, A-3, A-4 and so on.
- You can use a drawing template with the views specified, including the names of the cross sections.
In the template you will still need to place a view for every cross section, but you can reuse the template for any new model, as long as you make sure the orientation and cross section names are the same.
You may also use mapkeys or trail files to make adding all the template views easier:
If you find a good cycle of actions, like adding a new sheet, placing a new template with orientation and cross section specified, then you might use a mapkey to do most of the actions and you only enter the different cross section names.
If you employ trail files, you need a full cycle of actions that is repeatable and you can copy it many times and simply modify the cross section names for the copies. This was definitely easier 20 years ago, when trail files contained only easy-to-read menu manager items. But some people today still build their trail files to do specific batch jobs.