How about letting us know what version you're using. This is based on NX-5 and is pretty similar as far back as NX-3.
At a guess go to Preferences>Drafting, under the View tab and look for the "Define Render Sets" button. First you create a render set and give it a name then you can define how hidden and visible lines will appear, and you can apply this to either components or selected solids.
Having done so go to a view you've added or add one, so that you can edit the Style, and look for the "Define render sets" again under the general tab where you can add the predefined settings to apply to the view. All you need to do now is accept the settings to update the view and you should have your result.
I know now how it works. But I can not select every part in my assembly, only a few actually, why?
And is it possible to make component sets (in modeling) to make it easier to make selections?
The method I described may only work if you are displaying the solid body rather than the faceted reference set. I'm not 100% certain and at this point can't perform a test to verify but I think you should give it a try and if you can post back to let us all know how you went that would be great!
You say you were not able to "select" all the components in your assembly? Did you use the 'All Components' option when define your Render Set or did you perform an actual selection?
As for creating your own 'Component Sets', only the ones which you create at the current drawing assembly level will be usable at that level. You can create them at any level of the assembly you wish, but they are only usable at the level they were created.
To create a Component Set (actually this is an obsolete term as they are now called 'Component Groups'), go to the Assembly Navigator and at the top of the first panel if there are not two items titled 'Session Component Groups' and 'Component Groups in Part' then place your cursor over some 'white space' and press MB3 and toggle ON 'Show Component Groups'. Now if you wish to create a permanent 'Group' select the 'Component Groups in Part' item and press MB3 and select one of the predefined methods, the most common being 'Add to Component Group...' which will allow you to select with components you wish included in your group. Once created, you can go back and select the title of the group and rename it whatever you wish. Now when you set up your Render Sets, that group will be one of the items which you can select.
Note that the item titled 'Session Component Groups' allows you to do special filtering operation (once created these groups allows you to perform many different task on all the members of the group at once) but these 'groups' are not saved but are used for that session only, which allows you to do some 'playing' without creating a lot of 'junk' that you may wish to throw away before you save your assembly.
Also note that these Component Groups are what is sometimes referred to as 'Filters' and can still be used, once defined, as just that, easy ways to select/deselect components based on predefined rules and criteria.
Anyway, give this a look since if you're working with large and complex assemblies, you will find the use of Component Groups can be very useful indeed, and not just when making drawing render sets, but for other modeling sorts of operations as well and just when you wish to work with only some parts of an assembly open (that when the idea of them being a 'filter' comes to play).
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA
Yes, the "all components" function works but I want to select certain components. I still don't know why it doesn't work, grrrr....
And about the component groups. Very nice, but you need an advanced assembly license!!!! I get sick of that license stuff every time. Same with updating the mass of every component in an assembly, you need an adv. license!
I think suchs common functions should be included in the modeling license.
I still haven't got what I want. In a perspective view it once worked.
I just wanna see the outlines of the component to get a good view of what is connected to my model. It must be possible, but how!
The way we do it where we work is in the drawing file have the assembly you're trying to depict, then add in the reference components into the drawing file so they sit where you want them to then export a parasolid and re-import it. Delete the extra components now and you should be left with a bunch of bodies you can use for the reference data. Now just select them, go to Object Display and make the lines 'Phantom'.
There are pitfalls to this, like the reference components are no longer live so if they update you have to re-import new parasolids, but for what you're trying to do I think this should work fine.
You could also just add the reference components to the drawing file and change their line type to Phantom, then go to Edit Levels in your BOM structure and manually select the assembly you want to call up in the BOM. Yeah, this is kind of dodgy because the assembly could change and you could get an incorrect BOM, but if you know what you're drawing you should pick up something is wrong if you edit it down the track and there are incorrect components being called up.
You don't have to use parasolids it is a simple matter to position the components where they need to be located, to not have them in the parts list, and to set up "Define Render Sets" in order to achieve the desired result. At some point if you have several views and want to see the reference data in only one then I'd employ a layer strategy to provide that filtering capability but you could also hide and unhide components in views to achieve the same effect.
This is how the system is designed to be used and we're writing in the sense that experience tells us that these known techniques will produce the intended results. In fact it seems to anyone who has used some of these functions patently clear that the system was designed to be used like that.
Michael,
If you're still having trouble, please do a couple of things starting with trying to achieve whatever it is that you need in principle perhaps with a simpler part. You could use a small assembly with a couple of blocks as the components to do that same thing in principle as a test. If you then still fail then how about you give us a blow by blow account of where you're getting stuck with this so that we can pinpoint the problem. I could give you a step by step description of how it should work on a typical case basis but you know they already wrote the manuals for than so I have to assume whatever it is that has you stuck is missing in what you're telling us or that we neither of us know its significance.
I tried it again and it works!! I didn't know I had to choose for linetype phantom when creating a new render set. I thougth linetype would only affect the layout of the line itself, but it affects the whole solid.
It's actually very easy.
