Elastic components best practices

[PrintScaffold]

Greetings all!

Can we share the experience regarding usage of elastic components in the assemblies? Right now I think that this is the weak point on NX. Maybe I am missing something.

I know pretty well that there is a Deformable Part functionality and it works quite well (although occasionally requires some effort). But the inherent limitaion of this engine is that it supports only predefined deformations. But real-life cases sometimes involve situations where components are required to be deformed in an unpredictable way. This may include rubber parts, or some thin plates of coating or insulation. The trouble with them is that shapes on which they are applied can be either flat or bent, sometimes in a complex way. So we have a part which is documented as flat, at has to be a single part file for the sake of the correct BOM, but has to be deformed (or left flat) according to the surface which can have large variety of shapes.

So the question is: what is the best way to model in such cases? Is there anybody who performs these tasks on a routine basis?

 

[SethTan]

Which version are you using? can u provide pictures?

 

[PrintScaffold]

I am running 8.5.

Here's the picture of the real task. There is a roof, which is coated with the flexible sheets of insulating material. Sheets have to go into BOM, and their quantity should be correct in the assembly. The problem is that surface to which they are applied can be either flat or curved with varying radii. In other words, it's not possible to predict how exactly they will have to be deformed in the future.

Current task is solved by making these plates a deformable part with two variable radii. But if in the future roof is going to be curved in some other way, this particular part will fail to cover it in a correct way.

 

[PrintScaffold]

Also, this task closely resembles one in the different thread by me:

http://eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=345143.