Suppressed items don't appear in the parts lists

[carlharr]

Hello, I wonder if anyone can help?

We're using NX7.5 inside Teamcenter 8.3, with the master model method for creating drawings.

We've recently increased use of suppression in our assemblies, to improve quality of data in various situations (particularly how assemblies appear in TC Visualisation).

Our parts lists are normally driven from the TC BOMView, and output a text file.

However, some divisions are moving back towards the automatic drawing parts lists, and one division has just noticed that Suppressed items aren't appearing in the parts list on drawing (even though they would appear in BOMView and on text file parts lists).

Does anyone know why they are missing from parts list on drawings, and what we can do to rectify this?

Thanks, Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[man2007]

Here is a workaround, although bit tedious.
You can select the row corresponding to the Component being suppressed and MB3-> Lock/Unlock rows. Note that this activity needs to be done at components' unsuppressed condition.

 

[carlharr]

Agreed, that is tedious (although it does work), but it also puts a nice big strikethrough on the row corresponding to suppressed part :-(

We've had many (varied) problems with TC Vis data, some of which we've managed to fix recently using suppression.

But if suppressed parts don't appear in parts lists on drawings, then we now have a new problem.

I can't see why they should be missing, since they are still (correctly) shown in the BOMView.
We already have "component is reference only" available if we wish to remove something from a parts list, which works fine with both BOMView and drawing parts lists.

Any other thoughts anyone? Or might this be a GTAC one?

Thanks, Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[man2007]

For the first problem of strike thru text, you can MB3 the parts list->Style-> Select "Ordinary" option instead of "Strike thru" from the dropdown against 'Show Locked Deleted Rows' in Parts List tab.

For the question of why it removes the row, you can contact GTAC, or John Baker can answer the question.

 

[man2007]

I was expecting a Customer Default like "Show suppressed components in Parts List", which would have solved this problem.
You had mentioned about BOMView, but BOMView is something related to Teamcenter, and gives much more information than NX Parts list. I don't think the suppression status of NX component should impact BOM View of Teamcenter.

 

[carlharr]

Hi,

You're correct the suppression status doesn't affect the BOMView, or our "text file" parts list generated from it (which is all good).

I also expected a default or something for drawing parts lists, but haven't found one.

Thank you for the information ref. locked rows. A workaround we could use, but tedious and also quite prone to manual mistakes I think.

Hopefully John will know the answer!

Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

By definition, 'Suppressing' a Component, like suppressing a Feature in a model, is as if the Component never existed. The reason the BOM and external text files are not impacted by this is because they are generated by Teamcenter which does not recognize the 'local' change (the suppression) which took place inside the Assembly which in essence overrode what Teamcenter was using as a 'Parts List'. There are ways to keep NX and TC synchronized, but that behavior is optional.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[carlharr]

Hi John,

Ref. TC, we have turned on the synchronisation, so that suppressed items are also hidden in TC Vis.
This doesn't affect our BOMView and parts lists because we've also turned on "show suppressed".

We use suppression a lot already, for example in process parts.
Since we've discovered that there is pretty much no other way to hide components in NX, that will also hide them in TC Vis, we have recently recommended that it is used more.
This can be for many situations, such as "negative quantity items", material parts, flexible re-modelled items etc.

Also, some components are reference-only (we don't buy them), but we do still need to see them in NX and Vis.
Best option we've come up with is to WAVE-link once positioned, and then suppress the original (which also handles the weight).

So it's pretty important to us that they don't disappear from a drawing parts list when suppressed, as we move back towards parts lists on drawings.

Presumably there's no "toggle" to change this behaviour, so I'd think this may be a GTAC job.

Thank you for the info, Carl.

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, rather than 'suppressing' these "reference-only" Components, try this...

Select the Component(s) of interest from the Assembly Navigator, press MB3, select the 'Properties' option, select the 'Assemblies' tab and about 2/3 of the way down the page toggle ON the 'Component is Non-Geometric' option. This will cause the Component(s) to be non-displayed (you may need to do an 'Update Views' to see the changes to the Drawing) yet remain as part of the Assembly for things like the Parts List.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[carlharr]

John,

Unfortunately this isn't an option, because this doesn't hide the component when the assembly is loaded in Vis.

Strictly speaking, no-UG-geom is only meant to be used for components that really don't have geometry, such as fluids.
While it will "blank" a component in NX, if it has geometry then a JT file still exists, so it will be shown in Vis.

Really do need suppression to work in drawing parts lists the same as it does in TCBOMView ones.

Thanks for your help,

Regards, Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[cowski]

Stab in the dark here: if you change the component reference set to "empty" will it still show up in Vis?

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Or simply HIDE the Component while in the Drawing file.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[carlharr]

Good morning,

I'm trying to avoid reference sets if I can, because there are other issues with Vis (mainly relating to multiple reference sets which basically don't work).
So I've spent some time trying to find one easily understood method that will work in NX, and Vis, for many different scenarios across the group.
And suppression is the best I can find.

Hiding unfortunately won't work, because the parts will still be visible in their parent assemblies (and in Vis assemblies).



We normally use:
- "ref-only" to remove an item from (Teamcenter derived) parts list, but still have it visible in CAD
- suppression to remove an item from CAD, but still have it shown in the Teamcenter parts list

This issue has been spotted because we are trying to use parts lists on drawings again.

I am confused by the logic of suppression removing items from the drawing parts list.
If they are invisible, and also removed from the parts list, they might as well just not be there in the first place?

I suppose there's probably a use-case I'm missing!

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

I am confused by the logic of suppression removing items from the drawing parts list.
If they are invisible, and also removed from the parts list, they might as well just not be there in the first place?

Apparently you missed what I had stated yesterday morning...

By definition, 'Suppressing' a Component, like suppressing a Feature in a model, is as if the Component never existed.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

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

 

[cowski]

I'm trying to avoid reference sets if I can, because there are other issues with Vis (mainly relating to multiple reference sets which basically don't work).

Ignoring the "other issues" for a moment, does using the empty reference set hide the component in Vis? I'm curious because I currently don't have access to TC/Vis to test.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[carlharr]

Hi sorry for the huge delay.

John, I'm happy that suppression removes all trace of a component from the "physical" environment, that's what we need.
It's the extra effect of removing it from the drawing parts list that is causing the problem.

NX and Teamcenter together provide the following options for the situations we need to handle:
- hide component from CAD, include in parts lists = suppress (e.g. material part)
- show component in CAD, remove from parts list = ref only (e.g. sub-component of an ABI)
- hide component from CAD and remove from parts lists = suppress + ref only (e.g. a mirrored part)
- delete component = delete (not suppress)

But NX parts lists aren't working the same way.
This is going to cause our divisions who've gone to NX parts lists some trouble, so I've raised it with GTAC to see if they can help.

Thanks, Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[carlharr]

Cowski,

No, unfortunatley empty ref set doesn't hide a component in Vis.
Vis is a great piece of communication software however, so we're doing a lot of work to improve interaction with NX and TC.

Regards, Carl

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[SiW979]

To add my two cents, theis is just one of a number of ways that TC, NX and Vis DON'T seamlessly integrate, another example which upsets new users would be the fact that Sequence Numbers in TC are known as Callout in NX. What we want to do do is perfectly acceptable, and as far as I am concenred there is an element missing from the integration of TC and NX parts lists in order to create good assembly JT data. But when you have different teams developing 2 or 3 different pieces of software some 'mismatch' is inevitable I guess

Cheers

Si

Best regards

Simon NX 7.5.4.4 MP8 and NX 8.5 (native) - TC 8

http://www.jcb.com