Automatic populating title blocks from assembly files

[tiermaclane]

Hi all
I am working with NX4
And I do a lot of cloning with assemblies
Is it possible to auto populate a title block using linked attributes in the same way that you can use linked expressions.
I work with assemblies and I would like to control the title block from a top level assembly file.
The inputting of data in the title blocks becomes very time consuming on large assemblies and even more so when working with cloned assemblies.
Automatic populating title blocks from assembly files

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, you can create your drawing template with null text strings linked to predefined attributes. Just fill in the values of the attributes, hit update and your drawing should be good to go.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
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.

 

[hudson888]

It is possible to add attributes to the drawing file and use those to drive the title block. These are easily cut and pasted under File>Properties or by editing the properties of the displayed part using the ANT. The notes themselves would employ a relationship which takes the form of a bracketed text string which referances the attribute quite easily so long as it exists within the same file. There are dialogs for doing so for the first time under the relationships tab of the full annotation editor.

A simple example would be that if the attribute "NAME" was assigned the value "WIDGET" then the note text taking the form of <W@NAME> would display the text WIDGET on the face of the drawing. These are known as part attributes by the way. Expressions and object attributes may be addressed in a somewhat similar manner. Part attributes of another load part or component if you like are also object attributes.

It has also always been possible to set up parts list which establish those relationships when working with drawings in master model context. In this case the attributes are either inherent to the part file such as its name or saved mass calcualtion. What is more difficult but often desired when this question comes up is to reference those attributes in the title block. The problem is that any drawing is an assembly and the opportunity exists for more than one component to be added to it in cases where people want to show reference geometry for an assembly issues for example. In those cases therefore the system would have difficulty inguessing which component to reference for those object attributes and so you need to tell it in all cases. This can be done and the same dialog of the annotation editor supports it. Few if any users however do so as the links do need to be manually maintained.

Since attributes are easily cut and pasted under the properties dialogs it is a far simpler matter to simply operate as described at the top. The logical extension is to set up drawing templates perhaps on a palette in order to add the attribute driven text to the title blocks in readiness.

Cheers

Hudson