Applying Material and DENSITY within Family of Parts? 1

[DonVMitchell]

In NX6, (also in 7.5) I'm creating a Family of Parts. I can apply a material to the master part and then I create the family of parts to include the attribute, "material." The density attribute field from the variable pull-down list (while setting the columns for excel) doesn't give me any choices to select so it looks like no density is set, only "material." In Excel, I fill in all of the required columns with my dimension data and also type in different materials. The Part Family is saved and works fine, except, even when the material attribute looks fine, the density never changes from the material set on the master part. It doesn't look like the material pushes back into the newly created components. So, How do I get the density to be set correctly for my components created with the Family of Parts tool? I hope I don't have to create a different family for each material. -thanks.

 

[JohnRBaker]

What you do is assign your Material, then select the Solid Body (not a feature) and using Properties, assign the Body a 'NAME'. Now when you open the Part Family dialog and you're defining the columns of the spreadsheet, when you select 'Density' you will see the 'NAME' of the solid Body. Select it and then hit the 'Add Column' button. When you open the spreadsheet you will see the current density assigned to that column. For Metric parts the units will be Kilograms/Cubic Meter and for Imperial parts the units will be Lbs/Cubic Inch.

Note that tying the Density to a 'NAMED' body allows you to have Part Family models with more than one body, each of which could be a different material and you would still be able to assign densities to any or all of them.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[DonVMitchell]

Thanks John! Big Help! I'll give it a try today. I'm presenting at the Chicago-Wisconsin Regional User Conference in October and wanted to work out this detail on Family of Parts before I present. See you there! (Don't know if you remember me, but last year we ate together at Culvers after the conference) Thanks again.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yep, I'll see you there.

And anyone else in the area (the meeting is being held near Kenosha) who might be interested in attending, you can get more information at:

http://chicago.plmworld.org/files/2008/12/2010_Conference_Flyer_Save-the-date-3.pdf

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Note that there are some additional RUG (Regional Users Group) meetings in which I'll be presenting at, so if you're near any of these locations and are available on the dates shown below, please consider attending:


Mid-West Users Group (Minneapolis area)

Date: Friday, October 15th:

http://mw.plmworld.org/

So-Cal Users Group (L.A./Orange Co area)

Date: Wednesday, October 20th:

http://socal.plmworld.org/

New York State Users Group (Rochester area)

Date: Tuesday, October 26th:

http://nys.plmworld.org/

Southwest Users Group (Houston area)

Date: Thursday-Friday, October 28th - 29th:

http://sw.plmworld.org/

New England Users Group (TBD)

Date (TBD)

http://ne.plmworld.org/

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

I created the spreadsheet as per your instruction and assigned Aluminum-2014 with 2794 kg/cu m, but in spread sheet it is showing 0.30379 value (I am using NX5). Even if I assign different material it shows the same value 0.30379. Need help. Thanks in advance.

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

How did you assign the Material?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

Using Tools - material Properties - then selected the solid body and assign the material by choosing the Library material.

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

It works fine for me.

Could you create a simple example where you see this behavior and attach it to a reply?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

Here is the family part file contains the field NAME1 under density. I, just now realize that only this file is misbehaving. I tried to create a new family part file using your options, are working fine. Please check what is wrong with this file.
Thanks

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

Has this part ever been used in some sort of analysis such as FEA? There are a series of non-deletable expressions which gives me a hint that some other application may have been run on this part in the past.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

This file I used from the CAST parts directory of NX5. I have not run any FEA. Thanks again.

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

Well at one time or another some application was run against that part file which set several expressions which all appear related to material properties (I suspect that this was done prior to our adding the Material Library function and is related to some analysis application, FEA or some other application. These expression can't be delete since the they reference some other objects which no longer appears to be valid. I'm going to run part clean-up and see if that helps. If I learn anything more, I'll let you know.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, I exported the solid body, taking with it all of the parameters and expressions, into a new part file, reassigned the material data and then created a Part Family spreadsheet and now the density comes out as expected. Whatever it was, it was not related to the solid body (since those odd expressions were not copied to the new part) and now the model's clean (see attached file).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

Thank you for the valuable information which affect the material property expressions.

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[vrishraj]

Hi John,

Today I opened your attached file and change the material to Steel, it is not updating inside Part family but it updates inside part attribute dialog.
I deleted the existing part family and recreated using the same thing, then it updates for the changes. Any reason?

Could you please let me know how you created the Part Attribute with MATERIAL which updates itself inside the part attribute dialog once I assign different material. Thanks

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

The ONLY time the Parts Family spreadsheet function actually READS the values of expressions and attributes are when you add those items to the Spreadsheet for the very first time. Once they are there, they are 'read only', meaning that their values can be assigned to the expressions and attributes of family member parts as they are being created, but what happens in the Template Part itself no longer has any effect on the values found inside the Spreadsheet record. Those values NO longer represent the model in the Template Part file, but rather only what will be seen in Family Table Members created using the Family Table part.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[vrishraj]

Thanks John,

Now I have the correct picture of the family of parts.

How about my second question
"Could you please let me know how you created the Part Attribute with MATERIAL which updates itself inside the part attribute dialog once I assign different material."

How to link the MATERIAL value to the assigned material, as per your part.?
Thanks

Raj
NX 5.0.6

 

[JohnRBaker]

Just assign your materials using...

Tools -> Materials -> Assign Materials...

This is will not along set the proper Specific Density for your model but will also properly tag the model's material ID for downstream applications such as FEM/FEA and assign both Part and Object Attributes with the name of the assigned material

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.