The MDS application allows the MDS Administrator to create a set of ancillary standards with their own geometry. Configuration of standards dimensionally is covered in MDS Ancillary Defaults Form.

The ability to create these user defined ancillary types is achieved by MDS being configured to use a blank set of ancillaries of the above types, so that users can complete their own geometry. A new MDS user project called MDU has been created; a hierarchy /MDU prefix is used instead of the /MDS prefix where applicable. The following diagrams shows how this is implemented into an MDS project environment.

The MDU project has the geometry and point sets pre-created and linked into the MDS catalogue and specification. The geometry sets are empty and the point sets have the minimum p-point requirements for MDS. You can then create the geometry within the MDU project and set up any design parameters required for the component. The MDU project only stores geometry, point and data sets for the types and ranges detailed earlier.