NX Strength Wizard material list

[AdrianD]

The strength wizard is a little nifty tool for making “rule of thumb” decision at the beginning of the design. The materials present in the standard file are so short and general list.
Anybody knows were the file is located or how to add more materials to the list?.
We are tacking just the standard version coming with the basic NX.
Thanks

Adrian

 

[JohnRBaker]

What version of NX are you running?

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

http://www.siemens.com/plm

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

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

 

[AdrianD]

Hi John,
I'm running NX4
Adrian

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, you have two choices.

If you wish to just add a 'local' material definition for the current part file ONLY, go to...

Tools -> Material Properties...

...just add your new material, entering the appropriate material specifications and then selecting the part model, assigning the material. Now when you go and start the Strength Wizard, when you get to the material step you will see that your model has already been assigned the new material and you can just continue and finish your simulation.

Now that's fine if you're only going to do this once in awhile, but if you really do have several additional materials which you would like to add as your own standard library, you'll have to add them to at least a copy of the system's material library. This file can be found at...

<path to where NX 4.0 is installed on your system>/UGII/materials

The file name is 'phys_material.dat' (don't edit this file name) but I would make a copy in a folder you control before I would start editing it. This a simple text file formated to include all the needed data. Reviewing the current entries will show you what you need to do to add additional materials (you can also remove ones you wish to not have you people using). Now once you have your edited copy ready, you can either replace the original file at the above location, or you can set the Environment Varible...

UGII_PHYS_MATERIAL_LIB_DATA_DIR=

to point to where you've placed you edited copy of the material file is located. Now when NX starts it will use your library instead for both the general NX material library as well as for the Strength Wizard.

Now starting in NX 6.0.2.8, in addition to getting a much better designed Material Library dialog (these U.I. changes were actually made in NX 5.0) you will also get an additional function located at...

Tools -> Material Library Manager...

...which will allow you to copy existing materials, including ones which you have added as a 'local' material in a part file (note that this will now be the preferred method to add a material, create a 'local' materials first and then add it to a user defined material library) to your own customized library. You can then go to Customer Defaults at...

Gateway -> Extras -> Materials

...define the pathnames to these libraries (you can set up both 'Site' copies, available to everyone, or 'User' copies, available to yourself). When you start NX the next time, not only the system default, but also your customized list of materials will be added to the materials accessible while running NX. Note there are also controls in the Material Library dialog to control whether the list presented includes all libraries, or just the system library, or just your custom libraries.

With NX 6.0.2.8 there will be no need to make copies of existing files or create environment variables since everything will now be able to be set-up using NX dialogs and the Customer Defaults scheme.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

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

http://www.siemens.com/plm

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

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