turning parts list only into CAD assemblies 1

[SiW979]

Hello People

One of our users has been taskd with turning some parts list only assemblies in to CAD assemplies.

He basically has a parts list which was put together in the PSE (Teamcenter 9.1.3.6.c NX4.0.4.2 MP4) and had all the parts set to UG GEOMETRY = NO.

Now he's turning the UG GEOMETRY function off so he can assmeble the parts in NX however everytime he clicks on add new component it takes roughly 5 minutes of the machine thinking about it before he can add/mate/postion the part. In effect it is quicker to delete the part in hte PSE and add it again. Does anyone know why it takes to long to add the component? Is there any setting we can change in order to speed the process up?

Best regards

Simon

 

[hudson888]

Simon,

If you can help the guy and you're prepared to take a risk with the assembly, then a couple of things may work, but I'd need to know which way to jump first.

Firstly some basics which may seem obvious but lets get them out of the way...

You need to own via workflow or at least have checked out both the product structure and the dataset withing the assembly item master when you do this.

Remember that when you make changes to structure within the PSE then you need to save them before opening the assembly in NX. You should never continue to make any further changes using the PSE until you have finished working with it in NX. In fact many of not all installations will check the files out preventing this from happening. I recommend not messing about with manually checking files in and out to attempt such manipulations while they're open in both PSE and NX. It occasionally works but more frequently you have problems and are forced to start over.

You appear to be already across how to add the geometry into the individual NX parts, meaning that the item master must exist for each component which you will furnish with a dataset containing the geometry that you need. You haven't complained about doing this as I understand it. The case is rather that you simply have trouble with doing so via the assembly structure when by your description you wish to vary the contents from what originally was declared as "NO geometry" using the PSE. If I'm correct, though I'm most unsure, you must already have had item masters which may or may not have at the time each contained a dataset with a model of the individual components. I'll assume that the components are made up with the geometry in place, either you're able to add it without opening any assemblies or stop reading here and tell me I need to provide different information if I'm misreading you.

Okay. So now components good. Assembly not so good. What's wrong with simply opening the assembly in the PSE, then deleting the declared contents saving that, and then opening it in NX. You'd then add back all the components using NX and save it in NX, and hopefully find that the PSE version of the structure has now come back populated with what you would hope to have. I suspect either that you know this and don't wish to take this path or it just isn't what you want to so. So I'm fine with it even more so if you could let us know why?

You may also be able to change the NO components setting via the PSE for all the affected components before you open anything in NX. Then you'd save the PSE and open the assembly in NX from the PSE of course. You should then save the assembly if it works to open the components with their (recently added?) geometry showing. This is called synchronizing the NX assembly with the PSE, a condition that should be maintained pretty much most of the time and especially when you need to release or even baseline the data. Again it may be too banal and obvious an observation but necessary to mention if you're not doing this it may be contributing to your difficulties in general.

Another way if you find yourself desperate is to find all the parts that you'll need export them to native, rebuild the assembly quickly outside of teamcenter using only files exactly as exported from teamcenter and then when you're finished you should be able to re-import it into teamcenter. You would open the file once re-imported in NX from the NX session and then save it to overwrite the PSE. You should then be able to open the assembly via the PSE see that it has changed send it to NX and open it all up to check that it is okay and save both. This is probably the same as the first suggestion in a different guise, so you would reject it for similar reasons of they exist. In fact I wrote this up first and thought I'd just leave it in supposing that the system won't let you subvert it structure by any other means.

Enough for now. let's know how you go.

Regards

Hudson

 

[SiW979]

Hello Hudson

Thanks for your reply, I'll try and pit a bit mroe information into this post. The CAD models and drawings all exist for all the components but there assembly model with every part in its correct position does not. The structure was assembled in the PSE by adding all the components and making them UG GEOMETRY = NO so if you were able to open the assembly in NX all the models would be there, but would be all piled up on top of each other at ABS (0,0,0)and they would require positioning.

Also we tend not accept the default sequence numbers that are assigned in the PSE (10, 20, 30....110, 120 etc) prefering to change them to be 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. If we were to delete all the parts in PSE and then rebuild the assembly piece by piece in CAD then we would need to go and manually re-number 160 parts in the PSE and we wouldn't have to re-type all the notes etc.

So why does it take so long to add a component? 4-5 minutes every time you select add? what is the system doing? and how can we make it faster?

And talking about sequence numbers some of the continuity between NX and TCEng is quite inconsistant and can be plain confusing to new users especially. E.g. Where they are called sequence numbers in PSE, the column in the ANT within NX is callout

Best regards

Simon

 

[hudson888]

Simon,

There's a bunch of stuff you haven't addressed there about using the PSE synchronously with NX that I'll guess was taken as done and skip over repeating. But I can't stress it strongly enough that it would cause these sorts of problems.

Does it always take so long to add components or just when you have built assemblies off the PSE and are yet to synchronize the data assembly in NX?

The time may be taken partly in NX being passed the changes that it needs from the database, and partly by the database updating information that it keeps about item usages. In general NX likes to build the assemblies rather than to have them altered using the PSE, and normally adding a component within NX is easier. The trade off may be that the assembly structure takes longer to save when working with teamcenter than it does in native, but at least that doesn't intrude on your workflow as much as what your current problem would appear to do. I'm also in saying as much pointing out the logic behind the earlier post which is to describe techniques to avoid or get around building or re-building your assembly using the PSE.

I don't show callout in the ANT, but it is used within parts lists, and it does correspond to the sequence number field of the item master which you have seen listed in the PSE. Don't edit it in the PSE for a start, or the item master. Again always work Sychronously or it will tend to generate inappropriate callout numbers in the occasional parts list. When I have had these problems in the past it does tend to be a right pain which I usually solve by just editing the column in the parts list and hang the rest because the drawing matters more as far as I need to care about it. You'll often find it is down to some fastener that somebody may have released with the offending sequence number set. How or why it gets that way I haven't yet found out. A suspicion is that a refile to NX-(latest) of all the old NX-(earlier versions) data might go a fair way to straightening things out.

It sounds like you perhaps refer to the item numbers throughout the notes. Sorry to hear that if it is the case. I have seen this elsewhere also. It simply sucks as applied to NX parts lists if you expect the item numbers to stay the same you have to really work for it and I for one have found that to be an unrewarding pursuit worthy of my dedicated avoidance.

Nil desperandum illegitum carborundum!

Cheers

Hudson