Items UG needs to fix!! 6

[HellBent]

I just posted in another thread how I'm always telling myself I need to write down the minor "annoyances" I have to deal with everyday while running UG but I just never seem to do it. For some reason I think having a thread dedicated to just that may help. At some point maybe these items will get the attention they deserve by UG. So I'll start it off with a couple that immediately come to mind:

#1. Fix the darn 2d translators!! Why does making a DXF or a DWG of my drawing have to be so difficult? It has never worked right! Why am I forced to run it through CGM in order to get reliable results?

#2. Let me fix errors during feature creation rather than having to start all over again. I.E. "Through curve mesh" intersection errors force me to fix the intersections and then start all over again. Let me edit the intersections from within the creation menu so I don't have to re-select all of my geometry again! Apply this mentality to all feature creation...give me the ability to fix mistakes on-the-fly.


I think I'll be more likely to add items to a thread on a message board than write them down on a notepad so let's give it a shot!

Take care...

 

[realmagicracer]

1) John, so if NX5 has that features, maybe it's necessary to add some working examples and explanations in documentation or CAST. Or even in FAQ pages in the forum.

2) I think it's a good idea to add some kind of LOCAL file manager (ideas-style) for easy management - which drawings must be updated. It would be useful for big assemblies - to manage assembly tree, etc... It's not about PDM environment, but just local files.

Regards: Dimo Urumov

 

[hudson888]

John,

For what it is worth what you have proposed for the management of site standards, or customer defaults in drafting already sounds like a great improvement over what was previously the case.

From the point of view of an old UG hand please no more I-deas adaptations. I-deas was either to become NX or not at a point in time when they merged, thereafter quite a few good and not so good features were adopted, some I suspect just to ease the transition for I-deas users coming over to UG. In the wake of that change speaking for myself and colleagues of mine of similar experience and background it was felt that UG lost its way somewhat. We had several releases with more and different ways of doing the same things but for the amount of adaptation that we were forced to make we weren't really rewarded accordingly with enough in the way of additional capability.

Doing more of the same thing in different ways isn't "bang for your buck" in the same sense as having the capacity to do more different things for the same cost.

As you know the people who have invested the most maintenance dollar in your company are the oldest UG customers. Speaking from that point of view, (the only one available to me), copying other CAD systems isn't the same as competing with them. They may have a lot of good ideas but existing users get fed up with re-learning old skills for seems like the sake of change. We think UG can be better, this forum, and this post alone, constantly raises that theme. But for mine UG will only be better by being better at being UG.

On the bright side I think that the NX-5 and upcoming NX-6 releases appear to be doing more in this regard and despair that I don't have the opportunity to say more positive than that as we're just not ready to take the upgrade yet. What I've seen so far I like.

Best Regards

Hudson

 

[realmagicracer]

I think that NX should inherit the best features of UG and I-deas.
It's not about to forget "old UG-style" of workflow, but I don't think it should be erased all of the "I-deas ideas".

 

[hudson888]

Dimo,

I agree with your comment, because I was talking about things that are past and done. There is seldom any benefit in erasing past changes at this late stage, and I admitted then and now that the adaptations from I-deas weren't all bad. My main issue was that for all the new and different ways of doing things that we gained we also had to adapt to change and for the most part it seemed that it was all about new ways to do existing functions. I mean to be helpful by putting a strident opinion that can be countered in discussion here by the opinions of others.

Some of the changes I mentioned that I was less than enamored of may have flowed from I-deas. That was the Historical context which explains why it was probably done at the time. So my comments are not intended to carry any criticism of I-deas as a CAD system or of I-deas users. UG has probably adapted many of its better functions from all of the CAD systems that it competes with. At the end of the day I just want to put the case for substance over style. To that conversation I bring my perspective that current day NX already has the elements that combine to define its own style and that there are benefits to continuing in that vein to improve and build in more functions because that is where the real substance of better productivity has to come from.

Regards

Hudson

 

[man2007]

I am using NX4.0.3.3.
I opened ug, "no files were opened". I just wanted to scroll down the File menu, accidentally I hit Exit option and Ug got closed "without asking me for confirmation".

This is not the case when any of the files are open. I mean to say Ug will ask for confirmation before exiting, when one or more files are open.

In NX2 ug will ask for confirmation before exiting, and that should be the normal behaviour.

Am I missing any Customer Defaults setting?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Closing NX without asking for a confirmation is a change in NX 4. It will also be the case if you have files open that have not been modified. This was done to make it consistent with other Windows applications (several customers have complained for years that they expect ALL Windows-based applications to behave in a consistant manner). If you don't beleive me, try opening Excel or MS Word and then hit the 'Exit' button.

Note that for NX 6 we're even changing what happens when you have modified files open and you hit the 'Exit' button, so as to consistent there as well.


John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[man2007]

John,

You may be right in one way. But I still like the NX2 way of File->Exit. Because when you work fast, it happens that you may encounter in clicking wrong button, more often by clicking a button adjacent to the intended one. I tell you the scenario in this case, in file menu Exit button is the last one and when the menu is not expanded fully I have to click the double arrow button at the end of menu (to scroll the menu) and there are chances that I may hit the Exit button. If I execute any other command wrongly then I can just discard the command by pressing the Esc button, but for Exit I will not get a second chance, as in NX2.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Then may I suggest that you use Customize to remove the 'Exit' option from the File pull-down menu and depend just on exiting by selecting the Red 'X' in the upper-right corner of the NX window.


John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[man2007]

Well, I can say it is just a workaround to adjust with the new enhancement(?!)

 

[JohnRBaker]

One of the burdens that an organization must bear, unfortunate though that may be, is that in the world of Windows-based products, there is a consensus that unless you 'comply' to the look & feel of Microsoft provided products, such as MS Word or Excel, that your 'Windows-based' products are somehow inadequate. Now this was something that never injected itself into the Unix world, but it dominates the Windows world. So for better or worse, we are being constantly asked to 'enhance' our products to more closely align with the 'look & feel' of other 'Windows-based' products, thus this recent change and also for the other change to Exit that I mentioned earlier that will be introduced in NX 6.

While you may consider my suggestion a 'workaround', I was only offering it as a solution to your particular situation where you wished to avoid accidentily exiting NX. Since I can't offer you anything that would change NX to behave in a non-Windows-like manner, it was the best that I could do under the circumstances.


John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[Crocostimpy]

"and there are chances that I may hit the Exit button."

Just as an anecdotal response, ProE has the Delete Older Versions and the Delete All Versions menu picks one on top of the other. IMO they should be separated by at least three feet.

Boy I only made that mistake once! Even though it asks for confirmation, when you're "sure" you made the right pick...

Mike

 

[ewh]

UG used to have the Edit Delete drop down pick where it was easily mistakenly chosen. Could make for a frustrating work session. I don't remember which version (pre-10 I think), but they did fix it.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[Kirsten]

In drafting, I have unknowingly deleted the parts list quite often. I'll update it, then go delete something and I won't see that the parts list is still highlighted. Is there a way to protect it?

We're using NX2, and I've been testing NX5.0.2 (which I like more and more), but the new hole feature is a bit frustrating so far.
It pops into sketcher and shows my pick position as a green square, but I can't constrain that. Do I always have to draw another point?
Is the best way to locate one hole to place a point in sketcher and then dimension its position? Note that I'm talking about holes that aren't at an arc center.
If I am creating just one hole, wouldn't it be faster to use the pre-NX5 hole?

 

[JohnRBaker]

If you want a REAL horror story, back in 1982-83 when we were developing UGII V1.0 and we were still using PFK's (if you unfamiliar with what a PFK is, go to the History of the PFK) and such, there was a proposal to completely reevaluate the location of every high-level command (i.e., which PFK button did what) and after some early work we developed a prototype of the new layout and asked some of our demo people (of which I was one at the time) to come in and test it, and thank God we did! While most of what they proposed did make sense and was finally adopted, the one thing that lasted about 2 seconds was when it was noted that they had swapped the Blank and the Delete keys.

Now think about it, if you were not paying attention to what was happening, right up until the stuff disappeared from the screen, Blank and Delete asked the same basic questions, offered the same selection options and used menus that were virtually identical (except for the title at the top), but of course, if you thought you were Blanking something but later you discovered that you had actually Deleted it, that could ruin your whole day, and remember, this was BEFORE we had an UNDO button!

Now don't get me wrong, the person who had suggested the change had a perfectly logical argument to make for it, the only problem was that he was a software engineer and had never really used the software except when testing his particular projects.

Anyway, that was back in the 'good-ol-days' and we all know that nothing like that could happens now, eh?



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[JohnRBaker]

As for the new hole, the actual number of button clicks, NX 5 versus NX 4, are about the same, but it is a different workflow that you're going to have to get used to. That little "green square" is actually the 'preview' of the Point/Hole that you're ABOUT to create. This is a consistent behavior with any other feature creation involving a preview.

As for creating a sketch of points, over even just plain old points ahead of time and using them to create your hole(s), that perfectly all right and just another workflow that is supported, This will become even more common in NX 6 since we have enhanced Point Set to now create an associative/parametric feature of the 'Point Set'. If you create a Point Set feature, you'll be able to select that to define all of the locations for a set of holes and if you edit the Point Set, either by editing the geometrt it references, such as a face or edge/curve, or change the number of points in the point set, the holes will update as well.

All in all, that changes made to Holes will be best appreciated if you examine how you can change your workflow to leverage the capabilities that this function now offers as well as using it in conjunction with other functions currently in NX or soon to be.



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[hudson888]

John,

Attention to Mike also,

Could Mike program a user exit function so that when you hit exit it calls a macro or something similar, to ask the question, "Do you want to exit." I remember using such user exits in the past but things have changed so I'm not sure if it still exists using the same method, but perhaps some other equivalent guise would suffice.

Talking about PFK's my best memory of the original stuff was that the "Display Refresh" button was the only way to get the line you just drew to appear on screen. The original green screens apparently lacked automatic refresh unlike later CRT's that refresh the images so many times per minute etc. The button persisted right through to the demise of the PFK but few later users even knew of it's original purpose.

Seems like everybody just posts everything in this thread. Perhaps it would be possible to close it soon if it is going to persist in being miles from the original point.

Regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

Actually the 'Display Refresh' was used to REMOVE from the display items that you had deleted or blanked a line or arc, or had transformed something from one place to another, or when you turned a layer OFF. When you seleced an item, we placed a little "O" over the control point (usually the midpoint of a curve) and when it was removed, for whatever reason, we'ed replace the "O" with an "X" indicating that it was no longer displayed. Of course, you could still see it, but if you did a 'Display Refresh' what happened was that everything was removed from the screen and we would redraw only what was still visible.

You could watch a user and by how often he hit the 'Display Refresh' button you could tell how experienced he was. If he hit it after every deletion or transformation or blanking operation, that was a dead giveaway that he was a 'newbie', but if he could go 3 or 4 minutes between 'Repaints' (that's the original name for 'Display Refresh' back in UGI days) then you knew he was an old-timer. After awhile you just sort of looked past the objects with the "X's" on them.

Now don't sell those 'green screens' short. After all, they had a display resolution of 4096 X 4096 lines (pixals). Circles always looked like circles! But it was true that the only colors you had was Dark Green and Light Green. The geometry was in Dark Green and the cursor and those temporary markers, the little "X's" and "O's", were in Light Green. But hey, we thought we were HOT S#@%.

As for your suggestion about a 'user exist', well ever since menu/toolbar customization was added, you can replace any Menu item or Icon with a user defined operaqtion which could launch any sort of program, be it User Function, a Macro, GRIP, etc. Almost like having a 'user exit' anywhere you want to put one. Not that we approve of the idea of using soemthing like that to overcome the effort we put into making NX Windows-compliant, but if we didn't want you to ever change anything, we'ed have never implemented the customization tools, so I guess it's up to you ;-)



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

 

[man2007]

John,
I called it workaround because i am comfortable with 'Advanced with full menus' Role and I don't want to customize every time when i open ug and moreover i will not get the same system everyday.

I discussed about this problem with one of my colleague and i came to know one more situation where this enhancement is disadvantageous.

He is working on an engine assembly which has around 6000 components in it! To open this assembly it will take more than 10 minutes on 8 GB system. He exited the ug by click the X button (ofcourse accidentally),while working with multiple windows.(I suppose many people work on multiple windows). Will u suggest the same solution here?

I can open Microsoft Word or Excel in seconds, but not an ug assembly! I don't know why SEIMENS wants to copy some features of Microsoft even though it is disadvantageous?

 

[hudson888]

Man,

I think I see your point now that you describe the downside. For the moment I suggest that you and your colleague should try to open the top assembly with no components loaded then run part cleanup before you go ahead and open up the components. You can test it but I think running the part cleanup should be enough to get NX thinking that you have made some small change to the data, just enough that it won't close without asking. I know this isn't much help but at least I can hopefully help you to think in terms of safeguarding your session next time you open a really big assembly.

Regards

Hudson

 

[realmagicracer]

I think that it's quite useful to add simetric dimensioning in sketch mode. For example you can see the applied file.
I've seen this option in ProE and SW.

Regards: Dimo Urumov
Aircraft Engineer
Plovdiv, Bulgaria