Reference sets in NX6

[jptooldie]

Hi there

Having some trouble with reference sets in NX6

1, How to add and delete components from the ref set? The "+" and "-" just not there anymore

2, When i clicked the new button all the components were highlighted automatically. How do I turn this off?

3, I had a neat macro in NX4 which generates a ref set called "SOLID". Is this still possible in NX6?

Thanks

 

[wecurb]

jp
1 MB1 adds items, SHIFT MB1 removes.
2 Ref set dialog box. try unchecking the auto add.
3 Create a new "macro" but use Journal instead. Macros are now not editable. Journals are.
Happy hacking

 

[jptooldie]

Hi thanks for the reply!

1, Only applies to the GUI. I wanted to MB1 or SHIFT MB1 from the navigator tree. Not working! The reason I have to use tree is what if i have a big assembly and it'll take for ever to turn everything on. Besides it worked perfectly in NX4!!!

2, I tried that. Did n't work either. Still dumps everything when I clicked new button. This is driving me nuts.

3, I'll definitely try that. But looks like journal requires some degree of programming. is it true? Dont have any though. anybody know where to start?

thansk

JP

 

[JohnRBaker]

To start with WE DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT YOU CREATE REFERENCE SETS WHICH CONTAIN COMPONENTS!!!!!!

Exactly what is it that you're attempting to accomplish which you think having Components in a Reference Set will do for you?

Note that while we do NOT prevent you from including Components in a Reference Set (although some of us would be happy if we did), we do know that this can cause problems later on since Reference Sets behaves as a HARD filter based on an explicit list of objects. What this means is that if you include a sub-assembly in a Reference Set and later components are added or replaced in that sub-assembly, the Reference Set will NOT know that and they will NOT be included where that Reference Set has been used in the next-level assemblies.

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.

 

[MickyV007]

I don't understand this? Are you saying that its not the purpose to put components in Ref Sets?
So when i create assemblies and are creating subassy after subassy and the finally assembly them into one, it doesn't matter if the components end up as entire part/empty or whatsoever in the ref set SOLID of my subassy? I think you're going to have a real strange top level assy, because all my components will have datum planes, csys, sketches and so on sticking out of them?
In our company, in the past, it was the rule to create models with ref sets, like bending/cutting/... with different kind of features on each ref set. This was very tricky and difficult to change something afterwards, because you just couldn't get the ref sets right, and sometimes it was not visible in view or hidden, short saying, it s*cked!
Nowdays, we use just the model(solid) ref set to put features on in a part, then make some family members with them and put those members as Model(solid) (with the use of entire part to constrain them) in an assembly, where in that assembly again all the components are nicely collected under ref set solid as SOLIDS!
Maybey i misinterpretated your explination John, so can you clear out this a little more?

Thank you.


Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

[jptooldie]

The reason for including components in a ref set is very simple. Say I have a assmebly called STG10.part, and it has STG10_BOT, STG10_TOP and CONSTRUCTION - 3 subassembly. In those 3 only STG10_BOT AND STG10_TOP need to show up in STG10. How shall i handle that?

thanks

 

[jptooldie]

John. I think you might ask me why not turn off CONSTRUCTION in STG10. Problem is it's not very pleasant when the CONSTRUCTION has heavy parts in it (and usually it has). Every time when i turn on/off STG10 it'll trigger CONSTRUCTION(and cause massive display refresh) when I don't have a ref set to block it!

Maybe NX6 has a new way to do it?

Thanks

 

[jptooldie]

Sorry I forgot to mention there is a top assebmly has STG10, STG20, STG30, etc. They are the different work stations and will need to turn on/off frequently to make design easier.

 

[MickyV007]

First select the solid ref set in the menu, with SHIFT button hold down click with LeftMouse button on the part = deselect Contruction part. Then close the ref set menu. Once deselected you can set the Construction part on ref set empty, open de ref set menu again then select solid ref set, add the construction back again, then you have two solids and one empty.

Best regards,

Michäël.

NX4+TC9 / NX6+TC8Unified / NX7.5 native

 

[JohnRBaker]

Have you ever looked at Arrangements?

However, as I stated, we have not prevented you from including Components in Reference Sets (although out-of-the-box, NX will NOT do this automatically, you'll have to change something first to have this happen or you have to do it manually, either way, it's not how we hope you're using the system) we are just warning you that eventually you may rue the day and then it will be very hard to undo your past activities since it also sounds like you've established workflows which were developed specifically around doing this and so it could proive messy someday.

Reference Sets were design to allow user to filter out (note the word 'filter') objects which they did NOT want to include in a Component when that Component was added to an Assembly. It is only an architectural consequence that Part files and Assembly files have the same file structure and thus the same capabilities, but that is water under the bridge so now we just have to depend on good training and an understanding of what is and what is NOT a best practice and all we're saying is that this is NOT consider a best practice and therefore should be avoided whenever possible.

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.

 

[jptooldie]

Looks like Ref Sets will be another good feature that will be tossed out of the window by some talented UG developers.

Having said that I will look at arrangement (why UG doesn't keep developing new stuff around the old stuff instead of making up something new and make loyal long time UG users suffer). Remember Vista? good example. Heard a lot of complaints recently about new UG - 6 and higher. No wonder my customers are pressing me to jumpt the ship - catia. Hope that day will never come.

My understanding is arragement is designed for ass/components. Now i have to throw 2 stones to hit one bird (if i'm lucky). But since this is the only way out...

 

[jptooldie]

Unfortunately John arrangement doesn't carry the "filter" function. I failed to block the unwanted components.

Even I decided to do it manually I still can't get this ref sets around. It doesn't allow me to pick and unpick from the navigator tree. I'm totally screwed this time.

John can you give me a solution in terms of how to block or filter unwanted componets in the top assembly?

I've just moved from NX4 to NX6. I anticipated some detour like i did from 2 to 4. But this is something that i couldn't get around!!!

thanks

jp

 

[JohnRBaker]

Since Reference Sets were NEVER intended to work as Arrangements do, your position is without merit. Besides, with the advent of NX 7.5 we've made Reference Sets even more 'single-minded' (and thus more focused on what they were implemented for in the first place) by no longer using them to deliver faceted bodies to an assembly when working with lightweight representations.

And yes, Arrangements are designed to ONLY work with Components since that is what they are intended to do, control which and in what position will the components in a Sub-Assembly appear in the next higher level Assembly.

Reference Sets are intended for piece parts where I wish to filter out the no-relevant objects which I do not want to see when this part if added to an assembly and it then becomes a Component.

Now I'm not saying that if we were starting over from scratch that we would not have done things differently, but considering that Reference Sets have been around for 17 years (UG V10.0) and Arrangements, in their current fully implemented form for only 4 or 5, you can see that we didn't have the clairvoyance needed for being able to anticipate the future needs of the system when looking across a 12 or 13 year period of time.

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.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The original intention of Arrangements was to allow a single sub-assembly be able to be used where it contained different Components in each manifestation. Only later did we add the ability to also show the components in different positions as well. So what you do when you create your second (a new assembly already has a default Arrangement) and subsequent Arrangements, is that you can go in and explicitly select which components will be included or not included in which Arrangement. Also if you move the components while in an active arrangement and then save the part the positions of those components will be remembered for that arrangement alone.

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.

 

[jptooldie]

John thanks for trying to help me here. But I think I still have to go back to use ref sets. Arrangements is not designed to "filter". Pretty sad here. Such a good tool and we have been using it since for ever(never had any problem with it). i don't quite understand what you meant by "and thus more focused on what they were implemented for in the first place". We were using exatly what it was supposed to do: to display only what we need to display. Like you said the function still there. Then why the hell someone made that impossible to use. Now all of the sudden there is no easy way i can manipulate the display at the upper level any longer. sad sad sad.

John I'm not aurguing the intention of the ref sets. Just can you give me a solution (like I have been asking in the first place) to filter the display? Apparently arrangemens is not going to fullfil that roll. And if there is no solution can you please forward this message to those developers to put that nice ref sets back the way it used to be?

thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Have you actually tried to create a second Arrangement where it contained a different set of Components than the default Arrangement? If not, then you have not used Arrangements are they are intended to be used.

Now there's nothing stopping you from using Reference Sets, but if you have problems with them or they don't behave as you expected, please think twice before calling GTAC asking that an ER be opened requesting that the capabilities of Reference Sets be enhanced to support capabilities which we have already provided for elsewhere in the product.

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.

 

[jptooldie]

Breif study has been done based on the documentation. And hands on experiment also have been performed. Obviously arrangements is not intend to "filter" the display. All the components/subass can be flip on/off no matter how i define the arrangement.

Anyways thanks for your help John. I'm not going to waste too much time on this issue.

Another way to do this I'm thinking of is to make a Journal/Grip to retrieve the same old function. But that'll take a lot of learning curve. Do you know what's the best way to start? Or are there any good books you can recommend?

Loved NX2 - that's the best version of UG in history. Could get by NX4. But NX6 the changes are just too dramatic. Hope in the future the pain of moving on would be less and less.

thanks

 

[JohnRBaker]

Once past NX 5.0 I think you will find that moving to subsequent releases will be much easier since we now have (starting with NX 5.0) a User Interface model which we intend to continue to use into the future. The benefit here is that existing functionality will not change as often and the new functionality being added will have a familiar look & feel since it will be reusing as much as possible the common functions and options used in existing dialogs. Our goal is to eventually have all of NX using virtually the same style of dialog with the common options and settings being identical so that once you learn one version the next version will only require the understanding how to use the new functions and capabilities, but the the dialogs and options will already to familiar to the users.

I'm still at a loss over exactly what it was about NX 2.0 Reference Sets that set them apart from what we are doing now?

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.

 

[BOPdesigner]

I must be missing something here. So you want to easily toggle the visibility of the Construction part in the subassemblies within the Parent? Is this something that could better be done with Layer masking?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Or for that matter, you can just use simple Hide/Show.

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.