Autoballoon and Parts list basics

[BOPdesigner]

Starting to investigate autobalooning and parts lists in drafting NX 6. When I autoballoon I get balloons for all the level one piece parts in my assembly but not the subassemblies. Is there a setting somewhere for this? Also, how do you apply a balloon manually and have it tied to the parts list?

 

[JohnRBaker]

To control the 'level' of the Parts List, which includes which components the ID balloons are attached to, first select the Parts List object (usually the best place to select it is at the upper-left corner) and with it highlighted, press MB3 and select 'Edit Levels...'. When the dialog comes up you will see three icons showing different 'level' options. If you're working in the Master Model mode (that is the Assembly is a component in a separate Drawing file) the first icon should always be toggled ON. Now depending on whether you only want to see the first level components (sub-assemblies as parts list items) or only the actual detailed parts at all levels, you need to toggle one of the next two icons, the middle one for first-level only, and the 3rd icon for just the 'leaves'.

OK, now that you have that set, if you already see ID balloons just go back to the Parts List object, reselect it (as described above), press MB3 and select the 'Update Parts List' option. Now if you don't have any ID balloons or you would like to start over, reselect the Parts List object, press MB3 and select the 'Auto Balloon' option and when the dialog comes up, select the view(s) that you wish to see the balloons created relative to.

Now as to how to add a manual, yet fully associative, ID balloon to your drawing, just go into the ID symbol function and place as many 'empty' (don't enter any numbers or letters) ID balloons as you wish making sure that you were actually attaching them to components, which is generally the default behavior in situations like this. Once you have all of these ID balloons placed, go back and select the Parts List object, press MB3 and again select the 'Update Parts List' option. When the update takes place, the manually placed 'empty' ID ballooons will automatically have the proper ID letter/number inserted into 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.

 

[blitz97]

So to expand upon this a little......In NX, is there is a way to know for sure that there is a bubble for each item in the parts lists? We currently go through and highlight every bubble with a pen on the paper dwg and its corresponding line on the parts list to verify. Its crazy but true!

 

[JohnRBaker]

I know this is a bit simplistic, but if for nothing else other than a sanity check, you could perform a Select All with the selection filter set for ID Symbols (you will need to use both the Type and Detailed Filters to get down to where only the ID Symbols will be selected) and see how many ID Symbols are selected. If you have a Drawing with 50 items in the Parts List, and this selection 'test' reports that 50 ID Symbols were selected, while this does not mean that they are all correct, at least it would give you some level of comfort.

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.