Problems with color palette in mixed version assembly

[BOPdesigner]

I am starting to work with NX 6 and have came across a problem that should be easy to fix, but I can't seem to get it. I have an Assembly with two subassemblies. Subassembly_1 was modeled in NX5. Subassembly_2 in NX 6. When I create my Assembly in NX 6, the colors of the components in Subassembly_1 get shifted to the new color map in NX 6. And of course if I change my color palette of the Assembly to the NX 5 cdf file then the component colors in Subassembly_2 get altered. Is there an easy solution to this?

 

[hudson888]

I'm not sure but in previous versions the color maps have become mixed up from time to time as the technology behind it changed. There used at one stage to be only 14 available colors you know, so as more were gradually added the mapping needed to change. Now I hadn't heard that the technology had changed from NX-6 so unless I'm technically wrong then one solution might be to overwrite the NX-6 cdf file with the NX-5 one (backup whatever you overwrite first though). That way you wouldn't notice. Before you do it still bears asking why the shipped cdf preferences would have changed from NX-5 to NX-6?

Cheers

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

The colors only affect the contents of the assembly, BUT it does affect everything in the assembly in the SAME manner. Note that the colors actually assigned to the NX 5 subassembly will remain unchanged and will look as they always has when the subassembly is opened, even in NX 6 However, when it is added to an assembly, it will come under the control, while being viewed in the context of that ASSEMBLY based on the NX 6 colors.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
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.

 

[hudson888]

John,

Do the color assignments or number of colors change for NX-6 or is it just the content of the default .cdf file?

Best regards

Hudson

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, there are changes but they are subtle. The old palette consisted of 216 perfectly differentiated colors. The problem is that the human eye does not 'enjoy' or appreciate the mathematical symmetry of a situation like that and as such, people complained about things like there being too many Yellows and not enough Grays. So we sort of spread out the colors to provide a more pleasing distribution. However, that being said, if you used your older versions of NX without changing any of the defaults as far as color assignments, then moving to NX 6 will not be a very noticeable. However, if you did pick and choose a lot of different colors for different objects (such as components in a sub-assembly) then it's possible that you could see some significant 'shifts' in colors when viewing these components in an assembly using the new NX 6 color standard.

I've attached a file showing both the old and new colors as well as what the actual default NX 6 color palette now looks like. We abandoned the old color cube and replaced it with a set of logically defined mini-palettes based on how you might wish to think how these colors would be utilized, Light, Dark, Vibrant, etc. And since people were so hung up on 'Grays' we doubled the number,from 6 to 12, for the number of equal steps from Black to White.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
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.

 

[uwam2ie]

Thanks John for this information.
I want to explain/what are my problems with the color palette:
I have to work for the automotives / they are not on NX . Or they use the Nx2 color table. In other ... they can direct give an rgb value to an entity in Nx I have to custom the cdf with individual color number. Is this true? Is the color saved in rgb values in the part file or related to the active cdf?
thx in ad

 

[DavidTolsma]

You could load your old color palettes, or your own custom palette. Since the number of the color does not change but the underlining definition of the color does, gets very annoying to keep consistent.

-Dave Tolsma

http://Tolsnet.com/jobs

http://groups.google.com/group/NX_CAX/

http://groups.google.com/group/plm-exchange/

 

[BOPdesigner]

Thanks for your comments on this. I read in a previous post of a similar issue from NX2 to NX4 or something like that and it was mentioned that John had some GRIP program that would remap the color indexes. Does someting like this exist that I might run on the components of the NX 5 Subassembly to have the color indexes remapped from the NX 5 cdf to the NX 6 cdf so that is appears correctly in the top level assembly? I would rather use the new cdf as I too like the added number of grey color selections available.