Translating UG to IGES 3

[eclipse500]

I am a beginner trying to understand UG and how the translation is affected using IGES. Our company uses UG and we send parasolids to our suppliers and we ask them to interrogate and translate so that they can create CNC and CMM programs along with detailed drawings for inspection. Our company states that Ug does not support IGES or STEP. I can't get our in house person to explain what this means so i need some help. thanks

 

[jerry1423]

It's been quite a while since I did an IGES translation, but as far as I know UG still supports it.
You can access a UG external translator from WINDOWS start>programs>NX5>... then it should be in there someplace.

 

[ewh]

If your company's product is similar to your handle, I am quite familiar with them. I worked for them and now for a supplier.
As I understand it, they feel that any lofted surface data should be as true to the original lofted data as possible. IGES tends to create unreliable surface data (untrimmed, missing surfaces, etc), and they probably feel that STEP data, while an improvement, may still be lacking true fidelity. I don't think it's so much that UG doesn't support those formats as the company does not want to put it's data into those formats due to reliability.
In our situation, we receive the native part files and work from those. We do have to send files out to mold makers and tooling shops, and while we prefer to keep them native, sometimes there is no choice (that's an aggressive schedule!). Parasolids are our first choice for export, followed by STEP. Fortunately, we inspect the resulting tooling models against the native part files, and this helps us ensure that the data is good.
When we are finished modifiying the customers part models to reflect what we will actually be delivering, we send parasolids back to the customer. They then have a "turnkey" part that should meet their expectations.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[JohnRBaker]

In addition to Parasolid, NX supports the following formats for Exporting of models:

IGES
STEP204
STEO214
DXF/DWG
CATIA V4
CATIA V5

As for Importing models, in addition to Parasolid, NX supports:

IGES
STEP204
STEP214
DXF/DWG
CATIA V4
CATIA V5
Pro-E
Solid Edge
I-DEAS
SolidWorks

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
NX Design
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
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.

 

[hudson888]

NX supports IGES STEP203 and STEP214 (the difference between the two STEP version is that the latter support assemblies).
Parasolids are more or less native to NX so that data will always be faithful just without the parameters. Whenever possible do use this, but if you're sending data to a system that does not support parasolid then you should provide either STEP or IGES.

With the IGES/STEP exported data the quality of what they're able to put out depends on what you put in so that if your model passes examine geometry checks then you'll get a more reliable job via the translator. The checks you really need to pass as I understand it are when looking at the examine geometry dialog, all the Bodies and Faces Checks need to pass, with tolerance settings of 0.02 mm.

When you're importing you have less control over the results there are tolerances you can set for IGES but I'm told that while they influence the processing time there's no way to improve the quality. I'd be glad to be advised otherwise but this is what I was originally told some few years back.

There is one other translation format you may strike which is DXF mainly for Autocad and similar lower end systems. The surface translation through DXF isn't reliable and the results are seldom worth having other than perhaps as a starting point to remodel the part.

Hope that helps

Hudson