NX 8.5 Drafting Auto Balloon Alignment 1

[t0lga]

I want to auto balloon my part list but balloons always pointing the edges of the part.

Is there any option to make them pointing midpoints of the parts ?

 

[NutAce]

You should be able to re-associate (right click on balloon leader) them to any control point on edges (or even surface) of the components.
Another possibility is to create Empty balloons first yourself in the positions where you want them to be. Then when you create the parts list it will fill them with the correct POS nr.

Ronald van den Broek
Mechanical Engineer
Cad Environment Coordinator
Wärtsilä, Propulsion Services
NX8.5.3 / TC9.1.2
HPZ420 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 0 @ 3.60GHz, 32 Gb Win7 64B
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[t0lga]

if i re-associate a balloon, I can accidentally move the leader to the surface of another component.
There can be 2 balloons on 1 component which makes it hard to understand. Balloon leaders can be moved anywhere on the drawing.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Auto Balloons will only point to the edges of a Component as that's the most reliable, as well as the most generally accepted practice. As already mentioned, they can be manually reassociated, if you're careful, to the face of a Component, if that is what you desire.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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[t0lga]

@JohnRBaker
I understand placing balloons at the edges is a program basic. OK.

if i reassociate balloons, i can put 2 balloons on same component. Then i update part list but balloon id doesn't update.
If a balloon belongs to component A, i don't want to be able to move balloon to component B.
I must be able to put balloon only on the surfaces of component A. Why the program lets me to put balloon on surfaces of every component?

 

[moog2]

I don't like using auto balloons I much prefer to do the manual associative ones. (But for big assy's it's too time consuming)
I had this out with siemens, and tried to get them to admit there's no point having the auto balloons unless they're fully associative.
The fact is, they're only correct when you create them, as soon as you manually move the arrows, you're risking getting it wrong.
It's all too easy to move the arrow onto the wrong part. Its difficult to tell which part they're pointing to, when 2 parts are touching, and 2 arrows point to the same junction.
And more to the point... what's the point in an assembly drawing when you can't tell which part they point to?
Surely the programmers could code it so the arrows point to control points, not end points, then it'd be more likely to find the middle of a part.

 

[Kirsten]

"what's the point in an assembly drawing when you can't tell which part they point to?"

Bravo!

 

[JohnRBaker]

Surely the programmers could code it so the arrows point to control points, not end points, then it'd be more likely to find the middle of a part.

Not sure what sort of a "control points" you're thinking of, but why do you think the software is using "end points" instead as that's not the case? The leader arrowheads, from the Parts List balloons, point to somewhere along a visible edge of the Component and while it might often look like an "end point", if you look closely I think you will see that it's not but rather someplace else. In a Drawing, the edges are really the only thing that can be counted on as being related to a Component.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.