Markups are special "feedback tags" that reviewers can attach on the document that they review. By adding markups, you actually don't edit the master document. Instead, you place certain "pointers" on the document. After you have added the markups, you "export" the collated information of all these markups to a file. This special file, called a markup file, can then be shared among participating teams of the design. The teams can then view the master document along with markup file to understand the review intent.
This can be understood by an exemplar scenario. Consider that you have received the review for your design of certain model/drawing, given for review and final approval from the machine shop. In case your reviewers (machine shop team) find that certain fillets are hard to machine with the current tooling facility, they can put an annotation markup on the fillet and also attach a Word document containing the details of tooling available. They can then export their markups to a file and send it to you for correction. This would help you to rework the fillet design to a practical one.
Markups could also be simple labels, to remind the designer of certain actions. It could also be some basic sketch detailing done on a drawing document with lines and arcs.
The following entities can be used as markups in the think3 application:
Unlike normal think3 entities (lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, annotations or labels), the think3 application treats all the entities created by the Markup command as Visual Bookmarks. The markup entities do not get saved along with the file (*.e3 or *.e2) in which they are being created. To save the markup, they have to be necessarily exported to the *.mkp file using the Export command. This *.mkp file can then imported by using the Import Visual Bookmark/Markup command into the model/drawing file to make the markups visible in it. The markup entities can be edited by using the standard editing methods. However, they can only be deleted by deleting the corresponding visual bookmark by using the Delete command.
For example, use of normal labels would require that the model/drawing file to be sent back and forth between the members of the team. This will be an overhead in the case of big files as the parent file is actually altered to insert the label. On the other hand, using markups will ensure that only the small markup (*.mkp) files be sent, making the transfer much easier. When the markup in imported into the model/drawing file, the markup information is actually superimposed over the model/drawing to recreate the reviewer's viewpoint.