How beneficial is Shape Studio for complex surface modeling

[JChurch77]

The company I am currently working with does not currently have the Shape Studio license. We do complex surface modeling creating plastic injection mold parting lines. We import in a customers IGES file with a designated parting line and have to construct a surface off of it that can take alot of time using the basic modeling tools in our current license. I have noticed Shape Studio functions that seem to me would be very beneficial to what we do. Does anyone have any input on time savings aspects that this license option offers? I know this is kind of an open ended question due to not seeing exactly what the geometry we are working with consists of, but any input would help. Thank you.

 

[uwam2ie]

...no replys, ok I try
for mold tooling freeform2 will be enough, the bennefit of shape studio is more in shaping large forms like the outer faces of a car wing of planes or for estetic product design.
BTW the iges is the worst meta format you can get into Nx use step or parasolid. It will help more than a studio licence.
I know you only get iges from customers because they have V5 and no stp expensive stp license.

 

[hudson888]

The surface studio is quite beneficial. However any good surface builder knows that it all comes back to curves and construction method. It would seem that any understanding of that even to this day takes the form of the modern equivalent of guild craftsmanship. It is not really taught anywhere much that I know of and remains for the most part somewhat elusive to really get to grips with. So left to its own devices surfaces will tend to be almost as complex and compromising as any other surfaces that NX creates. The flip side of that coin as that what a stylist or industrial designer may see as essential is completely lost on most toolmakers.

As a piece of software what the surface studio does do and some of what we'd really like it to do are occasionally two different things, but to even explain that I'd need some considerable time to describe why you should want it to differ. It does a fairly good job, enables some fair advantages over the basic package and used well occasionally obviates the need for something like an Alias that your customer is probably using.

Users of engineering CAD however are routinely unfamiliar with the amount of time and effort surface builders are apt to put into each separate surface element. If on the other hand you expect to evaluate it on speed rather than quality criteria I'd suggest you may have missed the point of having a studio surfacing tool.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[JChurch77]

Thanks for the responses so far. What we generally are doing to create the desired surfaces as an example is to extract the edge curve (parting line)from the iges. From there alot of times I will use Ribbon Builder, this generally provides a nice looking surface coming out at approx. 90 degrees to my part. From there if there is a section of the surface that just is not desirable, I will then create points at the opposing side of the surface and create a spline thru it and then use Thru Curve Mesh to recreate a desired surface. My point in explaining this is I am wondering if that sounds like a common procedure for creating desired surfaces. I would like to attach a file that someone can look at to see an example of the geometry we are creating here, I may do that today if the BOSS says go for it. Thank you.

 

[Berserk]

When I was doing surfacing for a mold shop, Thru Curve Mesh and Bridge curve are my best friends. I just try to make the seal off tangent to each other. The seal off is gonna be handwork anyway at the tool shop.

Studio surface would not help much unless you want your seal off to be g2/g3 continuous.

UGNX5.0.4.1 MP6 \ WinXP-SP3
Productive Design Services

http://www.productivedesign.com

 

[JChurch77]

All of our parting line is machined after heat treat, any sharp edges/corners are then burned to finish numbers. The only "handwork" done here is polishing of the cavity and core molding areas. This is why our surfaces need to be really nice, and yes tangency of the surfaces is very important in order to be able to program the parting line with a ball end mill, the smallest tool we like to use is a 1mm ball for finishing. Just a little information on our procedure here. I will be posting a file for viewing soon and you will be able to get a clear representation of a common parting line surface I am referring to.

 

[JChurch77]

Here is an example of a surface we create. You will see in part navigator that there are no creation parameters because I just exported a parasolid of this surface and its just to show what type of surface Im refering to. The portions missing are cavity detail, those edges are not to ever be changed unless by the part modeler so I have to maintain that "parting line" and build out from there. So, how would you all attack something like this, just looking for ideas at this point. Thank you all.

 

[hudson888]

What you have done is quite okay and I can quite understand how it is often difficult to produce ideal surfaces when the requirement is driven by a parting line. However for what you're doing I would find the normal surfacing package quite sufficient. I might use some of the studio tools just because they're there if I were building this, but I could as easily get by without. Not only that but I would have to use the more basic construction methods to arrive at my goal anyway.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[NXMold]

" If on the other hand you expect to evaluate it on speed rather than quality criteria I'd suggest you may have missed the point of having a studio surfacing tool. " (hudson888)

I have not used the Studio tools, but I think I understand the truth in this comment.

I design molds, and sadly speed is so much more critical than absolute quality. I have thought about demoing the studio tools myself, but as I get more expierienced with NX I think its less important. My techniques in building construction geometry and iterating to a final set of surfaces have improved and I'm doubtful that the advanced surface tools would allow me to work faster or create substantially better geometry.

After all, we are trying to create simple tangent surfaces with a minimum radius compatible with CNC milling, with no regard to appearance. Extrude, trim, bridge curve, mesh, trim out ugly sections, more bridge curves, etc. I'll quote hudson again because I dont really have anything to add:

"However any good surface builder knows that it all comes back to curves and construction method. It would seem that any understanding of that even to this day takes the form of the modern equivalent of guild craftsmanship. It is not really taught anywhere much that I know of and remains for the most part somewhat elusive to really get to grips with."

If you want to improve, in my opinion, you only need to work on the transitions and eliminate sharp corners. You can accomplish this using your existing tools. Some of your surfaces would have looked better if you'd broken them into smaller chunks (probably using construction curves) and created each area independantly, rather than surfacing a bigger area all at once.

I have attached two parasolid parting line examples from recent jobs, maybe it will give you some ideas. Example 2 is pretty ugly honestly, but it shows how I minimized use of tiny finishing cutters.

Technique over tools.

NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

 

[JChurch77]

NXMold, thanks for the examples. Looks as though you definitely are creating some parting lines similar to myself. Do you maintain parameters throughout your creation of those surfaces, or do you find yourself deleting them in order to "recreate" a better surface off of an original? Also, are you using Mold Wizard for your mold designs? We have that license and have had no training on it, but I have ran through the tutorial in NX4 at one point and found it to be not as efficient as using my own created mold bases, ejector pins, etc. Thank you very much for the information.

 

[NXMold]

Heck no, I delete paramaters a few dozen times while creating the parting surface. Its based on the edges of the customer model which is non-parametric, so I believe there is no advantage to ever keeping associativity. Being non-parametric allows me to iterate, delete, and recreate areas quickly and easily and not have to worry about update failures down the line.

I use moldwizard, but not for parting line generation. Its very beneficial for mold bases, components, etc and also for splitting core and cavity especially now (as of NX6 or 7?) that you can create additional regions for slides. I find it to be an invaluable tool, even if I only use 50% of the functionality.

I initially learned it from my co-workers who took the 5-day class some years ago. I looked over the course book and was not impressed, it should be a 2-3 day class for the beginners material they cover. A 5 day class needs to get into more detail on modifying catalogs, spreadsheets, troubleshooting part and body attributes, tweaking moldbase expressions, etc. Fortunately I took the 3-day ASSOCIATIVE PARAMETRIC DESIGN course which covered a lot of spreadsheets and similar material that helped me to understand the underpinnings of moldwizard.



NX 7.5.0.32 MoldWizard

 

[JChurch77]

Ok good to hear I am on the same track as others. Thank you.

 

[hudson888]

NXMold,

I think we can even guess the product from those data. I'd probably go with a fairly similar construct. I tend to clean things up a little more when I can, and I like to avoid defining the shut-line with surfaces that come rapidly to a point. I'll run the little radius back as far as necessary so that in either half there is a broader set of matching faces that I know I can get to match each other.

And yes of course I wouldn't worry about aesthetic continuity for this kind of task. Wherever you can use a rectangular mesh surface you'll often get as good a result, and I'd probably expect the two halves of the tool to perhaps be eased off al little in those areas anyway. If the toolmaker doesn't do it wear eventually will.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[ewh]

Being able to work without having to be constrained every step of the way is one of the biggest reasons I like working with NX more than some other CAD systems. That freedom is invaluable in an ever-changing, fast-paced environment.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]