Moving from Alias/SW to UGnx 2

[TakTak]

Hi,
This is my first visit so please be gentle!! I am a product designer with a small consumer goods company currently utlising Alias Studiotools for about 80% of my workflows(obviously surfacing) with a dash of Solidworks thrown in for good measure(technical). After a lengthy evaluation period (SW,UGnx,ProE-W), we have made the choice to implement UG as our preferred weapon of choice for both surfacing and solid modelling.
Can anyone tell me what they feel the biggest noticeable changes will be in moving from our current combination to NX3, specifically within surfacing?
This will help me understand where I need to focus my training.

Thanks...

 

[Xwheelguy]

I've played on Alias a bit, but have never gotten into any in-depth surfacing in it. However, I deal with Alias surfaces imported into UG all the time. Based on the surfaces I've seen come out of Alias, I would model a little tighter in UG...Alias seems to be very forgiving when it comes to gaps & sewing....UG isn't. If you modeled in Alias with 0.02mm, cut that in half in UG (at least I would). Cut it more if you're going to be creating Class A surfaces or if you are designing products that require very smooth surface transitions (both through touch & appearance).

I felt that Alias' interface is quite cumbersome, but it did have the potential to be efficient through customization. I never liked the amount of keyboard integration into picking things (objects or radial popup menu) that Alias had built into it. I think UG (and most other CAD softwares) are much more efficient 'out of the box'.

Check out Shape Studio. It's tailored for Class A or Industrial Design & you can create high quality surfaces that require fewer parent curves. The Studio Surfaces are quick, clean & allow for continuity assignment where some of the Freeform Features in UG don't have that capability or require you to use Through Curve Mesh.

Check out the Studio Spline, Bridge Curve & Edit Curve capabilities in UG...pretty impressive I think. Many serve the same purpose in UG as in Alias, they're just labelled differently.

UG can create solid bodies in one step sometimes. For example some sweeps or lofts can result in solids, which may make your life easier than surfacing, trimming, sewing/stitching.

Trim body & Patch body are great if you understand how they work in UG. Quilt can take a multi-surfaced body & turn it into a single surface if you know how to use it.

UG has some powerful blending capabilities. Some will be similar in nature to Alias' to a certain extent.

You may wish to take some training courses in order to ease the interface change, see if you like sketching (not the same as sketching in Alias) & to get used to the terminology that is used in UG. It's going to take some time getting used to surfacing with a mechanical modeler. It may be a bit more rigid compared to Alias, but your results will be more easily manufactured & controlled.

Hope this helps a bit.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

 

[MSPBenson]

I delt a lot with the Industrial Designers at my last company who used Alias. I used it a little too but not for very long.

You will probably find that UG steers you to creating surfaces in one go. From what I saw of Alias it is made up of smaller patches of surface. UG also steers you into creating solids from an early point. I prefer to stick to sheets due to the flexibility and speed then thicken or sew quite late on. However due to the flexibility of UG (Normally 10 different ways to skin a cat in UG) you can taylor your approach by favouring simpler features and not trying to do everything in 1 feature.

As nkwheelguy mentioned ug is quite particular about tolerances especially with surfacing. Tolerance stack ups can occur if you're not carefull and then sewing and thickening becom a nightmare.

Some features you'll probably like, if you used alias like my collegues, are the "through curve mesh" or in shape studio the "Studio surface" tools. Very similar features which allow you to create a surface and then assign constraints on the edges to other surfaces/construction surfaces.
You'll probably miss a lot of the better curve functionality that you had in Alias. Creating 3D curves in ug is getting better but it's not as fast or as simple as ug. An example is not being able to create bridge curves using the u/v grid lines which you can do in Alias.

Geometry created in UG tends to have more isoparms and can be very complex. Think that's due to the way ug handles the maths behind it all.
Curve/surface continuity isn't the same in UG. Tangency is a mathematical tangency unlike alias which as far as I remember "knocks the edges off" so to speak.

From what I've seen UG can do what Alias does it just takes longer to get to the same result.

Hope that's helpfull.


Mark Benson
CAD Support Engineer

 

[TakTak]

Thanks Chaps - All helpful info. The rigidity + time factors are a little worrying! However, in terms of collaboration with internal technical teams and external complimentors; efficiency through commonality will hopefully outweigh these issues.

Thanks again for the advice...

 

[Xwheelguy]

Tak,

Don't let that worry you so much. At first it may seem counter-productive, but once the users get accustomed to the tools available, and their intended usage, the users will become more efficient. I would tend to expect that with any mechanical modeling software.

Also, you have to understand that you're moving to a different type of modeling software. I don't know all the facts or history behind Alias, but it seems to me that it wasn't originally intended for use as a mechanical design software, but rather an artistic type of software that would suit the needs for concepts, not real-world designing where math can get in the way.

It seems to me that Alias is capable of just knowing that you want a surface to fit nicely in a given area, whereas with mechanical modelers, you have to define curves or meshes of curves in order for the surfaces to look smooth & match surrounding continuities. I would find it quite interesting to learn some of the techniques used by Alias operators & try to apply them in a mechanical modeler & vice-versa.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

 

[a0f]

Hi Andy ;-)

Compared to Pro/E or SW, NX seems to handle surfacing more like Alias - first 30mins playing with NX turned up cv sculpting of native and imported geometry, curves/surfs from deg1 to deg24(!) and, unlike Alias, rock solid and forgiving filleting.
It's looking good so far..