Cannot make sketch external

[CounterEarth]

Stumbled on thread561-344547 during search but does not answer question.

NX 8.5, I had an extrude, just after mirror feature. I was able to make sketch external, and reattach. I then made it internal, and moved the extrude to before the mirror feature. Added it to mirror feature. Now I cannot make sketch external to reattach.

If I edit the mirror feature to remove the extrude, I can then make sketch external. I cannot make sketch external for any other extrudes in the mirror feature unless I remove them from mirror feature first.

I can make it work, but it is a pain (remove from mirror feature > make sketch external > reattach sketch > make sketch internal > add back to mirror feature). Am I missing something and this is intended, or is it a bug?

 

[JohnRBaker]

I think this is unique to 'Mirror Feature'. I say this because if you use the 'Instance Geometry' function to Mirror the Extruded bodies then you've still got access to the 'Make External' function. Actually for stand-alone bodies, we would recommend that you use the 'Instance Geometry' function anyway, and in NX 9.0 and NX 10.0, you'd use the new 'Mirror Geometry' function.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[jchurch]

I am having the same issue with not being able to make a sketch external to a feature; in my instance, I have a counterbored hole with that was patterned using the "pattern feature" tool.

I need to change the plane the defining sketch is located on, so I need to make the sketch external to the hole feature in order to edit parameters. I cannot do this without deleting the pattern entirely; no big deal, but just inconvenient since it will kill assembly constraints at the next level. After reading John's reply above regarding use of the "instance geometry" feature I gave it a shot using this (John, did you mean "pattern geometry"? I couldn't find "instance geometry" using the command finder). Pattern geometry didn't do any better; it created instances of the hole surfaces in my part, without actually subtracting them from the solid. So my process to fix this now looks like: 1. delete original pattern 2. make sketch of parent feature external and edit sketch plane as required 3. recreate pattern using "pattern feature" 4. hope sketch plane doesn't need to change again, because I'd have to repeat steps 1 thru 3.

Does anyone else have a better solution? John, do you have any more suggestions? This issue doesn't seem to be unique to "mirror feature" as you suggested above; it appears to be relevant to patterns in general.

Also, I'm using NX 9 with Teamcenter 9

Thanks!

EDIT
I went back and double checked to see if I could make the parent sketch external after using the "pattern geometry" tool, and verified it will indeed let me make my sketch external without deleting the pattern; only problem is as I mentioned, "pattern geometry" produces a pattern of faces (not holes). I can do a trim body with each set of faces, but that doesn't seem ideal as I'd have to do an individual trim body for each hole in the pattern. Seems like there has to be a better way.