Part Family Questions

[KKKing]

I am working in NX7.5.5 and have many assemblies that have family members with embedded family members 2 or 3 deep. There are issues with many of these assemblies which I am struggling to figure out how best to do the following.
[ul]
[li]Identify what is actually causing the issues when trying to load the main assembly.

Usual errors are memory access error,​

file will not load the family member file with out prompting any type of error,​

last one is it will not load, and says it can't find the file, even though the file is in the released directory​

[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]What is best practices for when creating part family masters and the components?[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]Is it possible to do a part clean up on the master FAM part and update the members, and will the clean up be pushed to these members in this process?[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]If when trying to do an update of the part family members and all members fail to update based on a feature issue, is it best to delete the members and recreate them, or to do an update once the issue is corrected?[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]When trying to submit an assembly that has these multilevel family members in them, what is the best way to clone or save as and capture all the family members that don't get recreated with the new naming convention due to being read only?[/li]

I know it is a lot of questions, but this area of NX is where I spend 70% of my time in trying to assist the engineers in why their assemblies don't load properly or at all.

Thanks,

Kevin
[/ul]

 

[Kirsten]

We don't make assemblies families using embedded families any more because of those problems. Too many loading, opening and updating problems and errors that never go away. It's been too many years to recall more details, except that I rue the day I ever set those nested families up.

So my best practice is:
Best: make families only of parts in which dimension(s) varies.
Acceptable: parts in which features are suppressed/unsuppressed
Acceptable: simple assemblies in which an attribute changes (for color, for example)

Perhaps you could try to clean up your familes this way:
open the lowest level family with no partial loading and load interpart data turned on. Maybe also "allow replaecment." (I'm on NX7.5)
run edit>feature>playback step by step. Fix EVERY error that shows up.
Then run Part cleanup.
Then update the family members.
Repeat at the next assembly level up.

By a celebration pack of good beer if this works
Send to me (Ha!)

 

[looslib]

Nested family tables area nightmare, in every CAD package.
Keep them simple and avoid assembly families.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[KKKing]

From what I am being told by GTAC, the part family functionality was put in place for the use with standard parts, (ie bolts, nuts, washers, items that do not get revised) and not for anything that has similar shapes or variations that will get revised. I am really starting to think that is the case in trying to get things updated on members that are read only. Is there any hidden things that I need to know if we start doing save-as on these members to get them out of the part families?

Also, Has anyone use the reuse library for any type of common components that would allow for different options, similar to the part families? I am trying to figure out what is the best way to get the benefits of the part families but not having to deal with the read only members.

Thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Rather than Part Families, if you truly need something that you can't predict what the final parameters might be, you could use what some people call a template or master part. This is a part file that is modeled up to a certain point and then saved (often set to 'Read Only' itself just to protect the template) and then after opening it and making the changed needed, you perform a 'Save As' to get the new 'family' member.

Also, there's a way to setup a Part File in the Reuse Library so that it behaves the same as would a Part Family part EXCEPT the files created are NOT 'Read Only'. If you have any of the Reuse Libraries installed, look at the the class of objects in the folder labeled 'Profiles' There you will find things like pipes and rolled structural shapes which behave like Family Table parts except that the part files created are NOT 'Read Only'.

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.

 

[KKKing]

Thanks John. That was going to be the plan of looking at that might be in there to see what all options there are. We are currently on 7.5.5 and hope to be moving to 9 or 10 at the beginning of the year. Just to make sure that I fully understand, the only way to change a hole or features and have it update across all of it components is with the part family function. The other ways suggested would require each of the separate models to be updated individually.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Not sure what you mean when you say "...the only way to change a hole or features and have it update across all of it components is with the part family function." Could you clarify what exactly it is that you want to do? When you say "components" in that last sentence are you talking about the various family MEMBERS or where any particular Family Member is being used in different Assemblies?

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.

 

[KKKing]

What I was saying was that our company has used part families to create a part.fam that has members that represent different models or assembles that consist of the following.
Models - omission of holes or features, which make up the different options that we have for these series of parts we create.
Assemblies - utilize the part family function to create assemblies that pull in different parts or family members that make up the assembly. Each assembly represents a different option that we product for that component.

The issues seem to be arising when we are dealing with these assemblies that contain a Sub-assembly that that has different subs inside of it, and all subs contain at least one PF member inside it. The example that I have loaded of the assembly navigator, shows the various sub-assemblies that contain many part family members at multiple levels of the build-up.