NX - Move component to another assembly without losing constraints / associativity 1

[spadazenon]

Hi all,

I know that this is difficult but I'll give it a try.

How can I move a component from a subassy to another without losing constraints? Or within a current assembly if I go "Assemblies" -> "Component" -> "Create New Component" and select a component from the existing assembly, how can I make it remember those constraints?

As the phase of designing proceeds, I like to be able to move a component within assemblies without having to fix hundreds of constraints all time.

Thanks,

spada

 

[JohnRBaker]

You can't.

John R. Baker, P.E.
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

 

[spadazenon]

Thank you John,

Imagine that you could. What a time saver would that be.

 

[Crocostimpy]

I don't have an answer to this, but I do have a followup question.

What does the Remember Constraints function do? It sounds like it would do almost exactly what the OP wants to do?

Mike

 

[JohnRBaker]

Unless you're moving BOTH the Component that's being positioned using constraints AND the Components whose edges and faces are being referenced, how would you expect there to be any time savings? What I mean is, how would the Component being moved, AND it's constraints, know exactly WHAT edges and faces to reference when establishing constraints to the Components in the new Assembly?

The best that you could expect NX to do would be to automatically prompt the user to select new edges/faces for each constraint being moved with the Component, but that process would still be manual in the sense that the user would have to make the individual selections himself. Granted, it could save some time, but it would be minimal while complicating the code and it would also have to accommodate the fact that just because the original component was constrained using one set of constraints that you would not always expect to use that same set of constraints in the new Assembly. This means that you would need to be able to delete one or more of the old constraints and then initiate the creation of new but alternative constraints.

I think you can see that the value of this effort may not be a great as it might first appear once you start to consider what sort of situations would need to be accounted for. I suspect that if Siemens did attempt to implement even this semiautomatic constraint reestablishment scheme, that they would make it optional since many people may find that it's simply easier to move the Component and start the constraining precess from scratch, like the way it works now.

John R. Baker, P.E.
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

 

[Crocostimpy]

I never assumed that it would be automatic. Of course you'd have to select new references in the assembly you're bringing the component into.

I guess if you're talking about hundreds of constraints that would get confusing in a hurry. If it's only a few that might be manageable.

Mike

 

[JohnRBaker]

Sorry, I was responding based on your original question, which I took literally: "How can I move a component from a subassy to another without losing constraints?"

John R. Baker, P.E.
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

 

[spadazenon]

Thank you John,

Of course, what you say is entirely true. What I thought (which is probably wrong)is that when I constraint a face of the component "partA" to a face of the component "partB" that belongs in a subassy "SubB", NX places a constraint between those 2 face IDs. So, my real question is why can't NX retains the IDs (or remembers if it gives new ones) when I drag and drop "partA" inside subassy "SubB", so the constraint don't break?

Thank you again for your time.

 

[invenioTr]

When you move a component from an assembly to a subassembly NX removes the constraints because assembly constraints exists only in one assembly level. This means, your origin link is between partA and partB. When you move partA in an subassembly subXY the new link must be between subXY and partB. Thats why NX removes the constraints.

The interesting question is why removes NX all constraints? When I have two parts, partA and partB. These parts are linked with constraints together. When I move both parts in a subassembly, it shouldn't be a problem to retain only the constraints between this two parts, because in the subassembly we have the same situation between partA and partB. But NX always removes all constraints.

Regards André

 

[PrintScaffold]

A bit different feature of NX, but nevertheless quite connected with the one being discussed - if within the same assembly the component is being moved from its place into another level, all WAVE-links become broken. I would have said that it shouldn't be a problem to automatically re-establish the connection in this case, because nothing is really being changed. Don't think it is that difficult to impement programmatically.

http://www.cadroad.com