Editing Part Family in NX 7.5 - Won't Initialize Family 1

[DonVMitchell]

In NX 7.5 Native or in conjunction with Teamcenter, I can't edit my part family. The Family part is created, spreadsheet data set, parts created, and family saved - All OK although extremely slow at creating parts and saving even the smallest of families. The problem is that I cannot edit the same part family to enter additional data. The spreadsheet opens and tells me that it is "initializing the part family" - but never fully opens so that I can edit the file. I've attached a very simple Block part with 5 family members in the spreadsheet. Is this a known bug or something wrong with my settings. Anyone else having this problem. John B., if you're out there, please help. Our Teamcenter is going live in a few weeks and I need this fixed ASAP. -Thanks

 

[cowski]

Are you using Excel for the spreadsheet? if so, what version?

What OS and is it 32 or 64 bit?
If 64 bit OS, are you running 64 bit NX?

 

[wackolacko]

I had no problems editing the part family, saving it, and creating the parts. Windows 7 64, NX 7.5.4

John Lackowski
NX Support
Win 7 64bit NX 7.5.4.4 TC 8.3.1.1

 

[JohnRBaker]

Using NX 7.5.5.4 (the latest MR, released on 13 December 2011) I had no problem opening your part file, creating all of the Family Members, then closing the file and reopening it and accessing the Family Table spreadsheet. I even made a change and updated the Family Members, again with no problems. I repeated this edit the table and update the Family Members workflow at least twice without encountering any issues.

From what I can see, there was nothing amiss. Your best bet is to contact GTAC and have them look at your files as there is nothing that I can see from here.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

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

 

[cowski]

When I try with your file, I get the error: "Failed to set Excel running". When I test with a new file, I get no errors.

Windows XP 32bit
NX 7.5.0.32
Excel 2000

 

[JohnRBaker]

For the record, I'm running the 32-bit version of NX 7.5.5.4 on Windows 7 64-bit using Microsoft Office Excel 2007, without any problems.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

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

 

[DonVMitchell]

Thanks to everyone responding so quickly. Looks like the problem is on my end. I'll take a look at the operating system differences and with Excel 2010 vs 2007.

The sample block with 5 family members takes about 8 minutes to create the 5 parts and about the same amount of time to save the part family. Does anyone else see this type of poor performance? My real part families have 100's of parts and I'm not looking forward to creating them until I get these issues resolved.

Thanks again!

 

[JohnRBaker]

On my Dell M4500 laptop, it took maybe 10 seconds to create the 5 family member parts and perhaps a couple of seconds to save the Part Family data.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

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

 

[DonVMitchell]

That's very promising news, John. Once I get my incompatability issues solved, I'll be looking forward to much better performance. I'll be testing this out tonight and tomorrow morning. I'll post my findings.
Thanks!

 

[DonVMitchell]

Awesome news! Turns out that NX 7.5 has a compatability issue with Excel 2010. Tested on Excel 2007 and everything works like a champ! Thanks for all of your help and comments. You really helped direct me to the right solution.

Don - Fermilab

 

[LinuxFreak]

John, when you speak of trying Part Families and it saving in 10 seconds, you must be working in native mode. I've been working with Part Families now for the last two years, originally on Teamcenter 8.1 with NX 5.*, then NX 6.0.* with Office 2003/2007 and now on Teamcenter 8.3 (brand new servers too) and NX 7.5.5.4 with Office 2010, and it has been the worst experience I've had with NX/TC. Our part family components are simple parts, but the spreadsheet may contain a few hundred variants. When trying to make one new part it can take 5-10 minutes to just initialize these large part families, then creating a single part addition can take another 5 minutes. If we try to create 10 parts in one step, it can easily take 10-20 minutes or more, on a good day. Is there some kind of optimization we need to look into?

As for the "Failed to set Excel running" error, we just encountered that today. A co-worker killed Excel yesterday during a part family update as it was taking over 20 minutes. Now her machine won't launch Excel when editing a part family. She gets the "Failed to set Excel running" error.

UPDATE - We just tried a Part Cleanup with all options checked and now it opens Excel properly. Go figure.

Win Windows 7-64 / NX7.5.4.4 MP4 / 24GB RAM / Quadro FX3800 / Algor 23.1 / ANSYS 14.0

 

[JohnRBaker]

Note that I can't personally comment on issues related to Teamcenter nor how to use it with respect to NX.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

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