NX 10 "Make Unique" 3

[WeldFixtureDesign]

What are the advantages in using the NX “Make Unique” command as opposed to simply using the “Save As” procedure? I am using NX10 and have a sub-assembly that is currently constrained within a larger assembly and would like to know which would be the recommended method.

 

[JohnRBaker]

You've already said it, using 'Save As' requires the user to LEARN and follow a "procedure", while 'Make Unique' is a single Command.

One of the primary reasons for the introduction of the 'Make Unique' function was because Ideas had such a function and while our first response to those users transitioning over to NX from Ideas was to "learn the procedure" it was pointed out that having to learn a "procedure" that was not readily intuitive, nor really documented was not a good way to work but if there was an actual command that appeared on a toolbar/ribbon/menu that this would make it easier to discover and use. We could hardly argue agasint that logic so in the end, we added the new function. Now there's nothing wrong with using the older 'NX-inspired' procedure just as long as you know how to do it and what it's actually doing.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[NutAce]

One of the consequences of Save-as is that it will replace ALL instances in the Assembly. Make unique only replaces the selected instance with the new part.

Ronald van den Broek
Senior Application Engineer
Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd
NX9 / TC10.1.2

Building new PLM environment from Scratch using NX11 / TC11

 

[SDETERS]

Make unique I think is great tool. Of course I am in old I-Deas user.

Make unique for me is great when I have 4 or 5 different assemblies open and I want to make a part used in all of these assemblies unique in just one of the assemblies.

If I did a save as it would replace this with the new part number in all of these assemblies.

Another reason I use make unique is when I have 20 parts in my assembly and one of these parts needs to be a different part for some reason.

We do a lot of reuse in our assemblies so one part could be used in many many assemblies.

Thanks

-

 

[cowski]

I think there's a bit more to it than John's explanation. Let's assume you have a part called "widget" and you make an assembly and add 4 widgets to your assembly. You now have an assembly that references a single component file (widget), but there are 4 identical occurrences in your assembly. If you "save-as" the widget file to "widget_new", the assembly will now reference "widget_new" for all 4 occurrences. If you use "make unique", you could, for example, make one occurrence reference "widget_new" and leave the other 3 occurrences referencing the "widget" part file. This would not be easily accomplished with the "save-as" command; you would need to first create the "widget_new" file, add it to the assembly, and delete the desired occurrence of "widget".

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Hence the reason why I stated that using 'Save As' required user to learn and carefully follow a "procedure" ;-)

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[cowski]

I was trying to expound on your post as it seemed to gloss over some important differences.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[vegetagaru]

make unique could not break the links, that would be awesome.

NX8.5 - NX9 - NX 10 - NX11

 

[3dr]

Breaking the links in the only weakness... otherwise a great tool!

Dave
Automotive Tooling / Aircraft Tooling / Ground Support Structures

NX9, Win 7 Pro SP1

 

[icconian]

The great power to "Make Unique" in I-DEAS was that you could use it for sub-assemblies, and not lose the assembly constraints!