Selecting items without tangent curves

[rocketgofire]

I have a part that has a series of lines in the same direction, but with different lengths. Is there a way to select just one individual line using the Measure tool (especially the measure tool in the equation editor)?

For example, let's say I have what looks like a single line 10 inches long, but which is actually 3 separate lines (3 in., 4 in., 3 in.) connected end-to-end. The lines are separate parts on my part navigator. I can individually select them, but once I use the Measure tool, or the Measure tool in Equation Editor, I can only select the "tangent curves," and the entire 10 inch line will be selected when I click anywhere on the line.

I feel like I'm just missing a simple fix, but I don't see a deselect option for tangent curves on the selection bar. I don't recall this problem in previous versions, since I think "Select Tangent Curves" was an option on the selection bar. I'm running NX 7.5.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[JohnRBaker]

When in the 'Measure Length' dialog, where it shows 'Tangent Curves' in the Selection Bar, you can change that option to 'Single Curve' and then you can select the curves individually.

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.

 

[rocketgofire]

Thanks, John. It wasn't on the selection bar, but knowing it was supposed to be helped. For some reason, whoever set up the toolbars removed it. When we upgraded to NX7, our admins decided to set up the toolbars for consistency, although I think it was mainly to frustrate us. So I just customized the toolbars and re-added it.

Thanks again!

 

[JohnRBaker]

Someone needs to have a SERIOUS talk with whomever thought that the 'Curve Rule' (BTW, there's also a 'Face Rule' when that's relevant as well) was NOT as important as consistency.

Without the 'Curve Rule' (and when relevant, the 'Face Rule') you could be a), performing more picks than needed or getting the wrong selections when creating models, and b), creating models which when updated could fail unnecessarily since you did not include an appropriate 'selection intent rule' which is used when the number of edges/face changes in the model due to an edit or modification.

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.

 

[Toost]

Did the "whoever" also manage to remove the "Roles palette" and the ootb roles ? - Select one of the default roles and you should have the default uif back.
Also note that you should be able to rightclick a selected object to change the selection rule. I.e "Tangent curves" -> "single curve" but keep the selected.

 

[rocketgofire]

Thanks, Toost. The right-click tip is also helpful, since it puts things directly next to where your mouse button already is.

The "consistency" change was made so we all had the icons that our particular team uses, rather than the set of default icons. We've had a few chats with the guy who did it, and he'll just let us customize our own toolbars in the future, since everyone designs things differently. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts, so I don't need some icons but I do use others, and my neighbor has bad eyesight and uses large icons, so he wants to minimize the number of icons.

Finally, one thing I noticed when fixing my selection bar is that the icons you put on under "customize" might just disappear when you place them, since they're generally unavailable (I don't need an option to select tangent curves when I'm moving components in an assembly), so you don't actually know if they're already on the selection bar or not. It would be nice to see the entire customized selection bar when you click "Customize," so you can move icons/dropdowns around to where you want them.