Creating smart balloons without a parts list 3

[jmiklovic]

Is it possible to create balloons that reference a component without using a parts list?

Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.

 

[cowski]

Annotations (notes, ID symbol text, etc) can reference an attribute or expression value of a component, no parts list required.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[jmiklovic]

Thanks cowski for the response, can you elaborate a little more for me on how to make this happen.

Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Are you asking for the ability to add balloons to your Assembly Drawing which contains the same Callout letter/number that you would have gotten IF you had actually generated a Parts List note? If that is what you're asking for, the answer is NO (this might be different if Teamcenter is in the picture as it has it's own concept of a Parts List and it might be able to impose that on an Assembly Drawing with or without an actual Parts List note).

The reason that I say NO (but with the Teamcenter caveat in mind) is that it's the act of CREATING the Parts List note that assigns the Callout letters/numbers to the Components of the Drawing Assembly in the first place. Until the Parts List note is generated, there are NO Callouts assigned. And even if you were to manually create the Callout Attributes, that would not help since the only mechanism available to force a manually placed Balloon to update in such a manner that it reflects the letter/number entered as the Callout attribute is to force an update of the Parts List note itself. Without the note, there's nothing to select and ask that it update.

Now if your only concern if NOT seeing the Parts List note on your drawing but you still want the balloons to be displayed AS IF there was a Parts List note is to create the note, update the balloons and then simply hide the note.

Now what Cowski alluded to is possible, but for it be easy to apply and update, you're going to need to write some sort of custom application and depending on how much automation you want, it could get very complicated.

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.

 

[cowski]

To get an annotation to reference an attribute or expression, change the "category" to "relationships"; the dialog will change giving you options to "insert expression", "insert object attribute", etc. To insert the text of a component attribute: choose the "object attribute" button, change your selection filter to "component" (to make selection easier), pick the component of interest, a dialog will open showing the available component attributes, pick the one you want, and press OK. Some text will be entered into the annotation dialog that references the picked attribute.

This makes it easy to reference the material, manufacturer, color, or any other attribute that you have assigned to the component/part file. However, if you are creating callouts it can get tricky (as pointed out by John). The advantage of a parts list is it will assign a unique callout number to each unique component and keep track of quantities. If you are creating your own "parts list", you will be responsible for keeping this information accurate and updated.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[jmiklovic]

Thanks John and Cowski. I ended up placing the parts list on a separate sheet and changed the auto balloons to call out 'part name'. Then I autoballooned it and removed the balloons I didn't need.

What would be nice (maybe this exists and I just don't know it) would be functionality that allows you to place your balloons first and then update those balloons to the parts list. I have a lot of situations where I am only looking to call out 4 or 5 details in a view that might include 40 or 50. I had a 6 year hiatus from NX and for some reason I remembered that there was a trick for doing this. Likely my memory is wrong.

Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.

 

[cowski]

What would be nice (maybe this exists and I just don't know it) would be functionality that allows you to place your balloons first and then update those balloons to the parts list.

Place an empty balloon of the same type used by the parts list, associate the leader to a component edge, update the parts list, and the balloon callout text will be automatically entered.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[Arkance/PhoeNX]

Have a look at

http://vimeo.com/album/3065578/video/106565338.

I think it will give the info on what you want to do.

Anthony Galante
Senior Support Engineer


NX3 to NX10 with almost every MR (21versions)

 

[jmiklovic]

Alright placing the balloons and then updating the parts list did not work, I had actually tried that already because that is how I remembered it working in the past.

Buried in that video that PhoeNX posted was instructions for changing an environment variable that would activate that functionality.

Set UGII_UPDATED_ALL_ID_SYMBOLS_WITH_PLIST to 1

Now it works perfect. Thanks everyone, issue is resolved.

Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.

 

[jpetach]

Jay,

It is great to hear that it is working however I think there may be an inadvertent typo in the post.

(For those that read this thread in the future and that may not watch the video,) the variable name is

UGII_UPDATE_ALL_ID_SYMBOLS_WITH_PLIST

HTH,

Joe

 

[jmiklovic]

Good catch Joe! You are correct.

UGII_UPDATE_ALL_ID_SYMBOLS_WITH_PLIST

Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.