Assembly from Excel

[JJL79]

Im trying to find out if it is possible to make an assembly based on information found in a excelfile. For example, i want to add a component multiple times with same constraints by specifying in excelfile how many instances i need.

Is this possible?

NX 6

// JJL

 

[JohnRBaker]

If properly written, I imagine an NX Open application could be written which could create an assembly from the information found in a spreadsheet file.

That being said, if this is really the sort of workflow you intend to follow, may I suggest that you look seriously into Teamcenter and some of the tools which are available there which promotes this idea of a product structure definition.

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.

 

[JJL79]

Ok. Can you please guide me to which tools in Teamcenter i should look into?

// JJL

 

[JohnRBaker]

This might help get you started:

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/Images/2014_tcm1023-81074.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.

 

[JJL79]

Thank you very much. I have got Teamcenter but i never looked in to it. Our installation of teamcenter is not working properly because when i hit F1 or Help\Help library i get "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"

While this is taken care of by our IT-Techs i wonder if i can find more information online?

// JJL

 

[MarckyMON]

While this is taken care of by our IT-Techs i wonder if i can find more information online?

I'm afraid you won't be able to. Such information is usually covered by workshops / seminars.

Marc
NX Software Developer

 

[JJL79]

I got this working by getting the total number and offset from Excel but now i have a different problem. When i update the information in my excelfile and run "update for external exchange" the parts in the assembly does not end up in the correct location. I need to run "update for external exchange" two or sometimes three times to get all parts in the correct location. Is there a solution to this problem?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Are the positions of ALL Components controlled by the spreadsheet ONLY? Or are some of the Components positioned (constrained) relative to other Components?

If some of the Component's positions controlled by the spreadsheet and others are dependent on other Components what might be happening is that some of the positions my be getting resolved out-of-order. What I mean is that lets say 'A' is positioned relative to 'B' and 'B' is positioned using the spreadsheet. When you do the update 'A' my get updated first but then 'B' is updated. It looks like 'A' is not correct until you update the second time as 'A' will now move to where 'B' is after the spreadsheet 'update'. Now if this assembly has several Components positioned (constrained) relative to several components, some position using the spreadsheet data and others not, it could be quite possible that multiple updates may be needed since these are not iterative. That is that do NOT continue to update, based on a single command, until ALL possible relationships have been resolved.

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.

 

[JJL79]

JohnRBaker, some are controlled by spreadsheet and some constrained. So i guess i have to accept that it takes two updates to get a correct update.

 

[JJL79]

A colleague of mine solved this problem for me. He asked me to check the settings in "File/Options/Assembly Load Options" and i think by unchecking "Use Partial Loading" and checking "Load Interpart Data - Load Parents - All levels" the problem was solved.

 

[daluigi]

Talking about how to dynamically build assemblies into NX from an external configuration sheet (i.e. Excel), you might be interested in the link bellow (especially #2 and #3).
Assemblies components knowledge there is read from an external text file as well as how they should constraint to each others to construct the needed structural steel connection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r57u8hRYeU

D.