Reorder feature warning........or not

[edgray]

Does anyone know why, when reordering features via dragging in the feature tree, one sometimes gets a warning the feature x is dependent on feature x-n, and some other times it just grabs those parent features and reodrers them too. I just made the most god awful mess out of my part by grabbing about 25 features (in the #2500-#2600 range) and dragged them up to the #715 region. In the process of the reorder NX brought along a hundred or so sketches and datums that the reordered sketch was dependent on. unfortunately my installatoin crashes with such regualrity I frequently save without carefull checking the model. In this case I will have to throw away an enormous amount of work to get back to my unscrambled part.

So, why sometimes a warming and sometimes pulling the parents as well.

Oh and then the features failed anyway.

 

[edgray]

Oops I am working in NX5.

 

[JohnRBaker]

There are, for all intents and purposes, two different classes of 'features'. The first is like a Blend, Hole, Chamber, Offset, etc. The second group are things like Sketches, Datums, Points, Curves, etc. While any of these 'features' can exist on their own, they are generally considered as being the objects which are referenced (i.e. become a parent) when creating another feature, like an extrude or a revolve. Therefore, when a child of one of these features is moved it's pretty safe to say that the parent needs to be moved as well since it's only purpose in life was to be used to help define the feature being moved. You can't say this about moving a 'feature' from the first set described above since their parent is a body (or some part of a body) and since many features could be sharing the same parent body (think of how many blends or holes could be applied to a single solid body) we treat this differently since it's not as safe to assume that we can move the parents along with the children since could have an effect on many other children at the same level of the model, whereas Sketches are generally only referenced once in a models history, as is often the case with Datums, Points and independent Curves as well.

Anyway, I hope this helps explain what's happening and why.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

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[edgray]

OK so it comes down to whether the parents are in fact able to be moved. This seems to be a good spot for an optional warning asking if the user intended for the parents to be reordered too. I know there is a problem with excessive warnings. Maybe it could be switched on or off in Customer Defaults.

I have parts that are very oder sensitive, and I use reorder a lot. It is frequently not immediatly apparent that some other features have come along for the ride.

I was able to remove the depandencies and put the sketches and datums back where they belonged but it took >1hr.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[FrankMalone]

Hello,

Might be an improvement of NX to have a tree for each body, so we can reorder the features in it without take care of the rest of the tree.

It's like the part navigator without time stamp order but each body has the "features tree" independent of the rest of bodies.

Regards
Frank.

 

[edgray]

Nice idea but in reality the relationships are way too complicated to be represented as a "tree". The reality is much more like a spider web. However the sequential nature of the current "tree" is critical.