sketch on an advanced flange 1

[SiW979]

Hi All

I've been training a bunch of people how to use NX sheet metal this last couple of weeks, and one of the things that I noticed when I was creating a part with a mix of normal flange and advanced flange, is it wouldn't allow me to sketch on the planar face of the advanced flange for some reason. It would let me create a datum on it, and sketch on the datum, but then I could not constrain the sketch to the edges of said flange????? Any how I have attached the very same component and the flange in question is the one with the green faces.

Many thanks

Si

Best regards

Simon NX7.5.4.4 MP5 - TC 8

http://www.jcb.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, because an 'Advanced Flange' is considered a 'free-form' object, despite what it might look like, the faces are actually b-surfaces and the edges are splines. So even if a b-surface is equivalent to a planar face or a spline is as 'straight' as a line, they're still 'free-form' objects and as such they can't be directly referenced as a sketch face or the edges are vector directions. In order to use them for at least positional purposes, you need to first create some referencable objects, such as Datum Planes and/or Axis, link to the faces/edges of the 'Advanced Flange' and then create your Sketch relative to them, as you've already discovered yourself.

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

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.