NX6 - find CSA at regular intervals

[Chris452]

Hi,

I'm trying to "Area Rule" an aerodynamic body, so need to find the cross sectional area (CSA) of my model at regular intervals.

My model is made out of surfaces, rather than solids, so the manual method to do this seems to be the following:

Edit work section>>Save Copy of Section Cuves
Bounded Plane>>(select curve to create planar surface)
Measure face to get CSA at this one location
Repeat the process a few mms further along the length of the model

As my model is more than 10 metres long this process would take a long time to do manually. Is there a way to automate the calculation of CSAs (and preferably have the data tabulated for export to Excel)?

Many thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Why are you not using...

Analysis -> Section Interia...

...since it would appear to do exactly what you wish, except perhaps for formatting the data for export to Excel, but it comes damn close. All you need to do is, after selecting the faces, defining how the reference planes are determined and defining the number of planes or distances between them, you simply select the 'Show Information Window' button and you will get a complete list of the all of the area properties for all the defined sections. Now all you have to do is extract the last column of data as that the CSA (Cross-Sectional Area) of each 'section'.

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

 

[Chris452]

Unfortunately Section Inertia Anaylsis isn't fully up to the task.

I've sewn my model together to make it a solid, which avoids the hollow section problem. However, only some of the CSAs are able to be measured by the tool, with the warning "Not all sections could be analysed" cropping up.

As this is now a solid body I've been using "Size Check" to manually measure the CSAs instead. This is slow, but works.

Thanks anyway

 

[cowski]

I encourage you to use the 'examine geometry' tool to ensure there are no geometry errors that are causing the "Not all sections could be analysed" message.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And if you DO find any 'anomalies' reported by the Examine Geometry tool and it's not something which is obvious as to how it should be fixed, may I suggest that you next try going to...

File -> Export -> Heal Geometry...

...and see if this NX utility is able to 'fix' your model.

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