UGS NX5 Dimension Style Question

[itzmitten]

question:

is there a way to place dimensions in feet in decimal form? I am creating some ordinate dimensioning for elevations and need to have the feet remainder be in decimals not in inches.

example:

instead of 400'-3" I want 400.25'

i know exactly where the option is to make a change like this. setting units as engineering or architectural feet/inches makes the option for decimal display grayed out and unselectable. anyone know a way around this? thanks in advance.

--Anthony

 

[JohnRBaker]

Sorry, I'm unaware of any legitimate drafting standard that supports decimal feet as a units scheme for dimensioning a drawing. And as such, we have made no provisions for such a situation.

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.

 

[itzmitten]

That seems odd to me. Perhaps the issue is that NX5 is not really designed for civil engineering and is more geared towards mechanical? I do know that when any surveying crew shoots the grades and layouts for pretty much any construction project, they use a decimal feet unit scheme. I have seen countless construction documents that use a decimal feet scheme to annotate elevations. There is no way to maybe create a custom dimension style whereby NX recognizes 1 "unit" to be 12 inches? seems odd Siemens would have skipped such an easy implementation.

 

[JohnRBaker]

You'll have to create some sort of program to support that, but it could be done. After all, years ago I had to write one to support feet and inches before it was included in UG (this was back in the late 70's).

As for your keen observation that NX appears somehow not to be intended for Civil Engineering, you hit the nail on the head. Years ago, while we were still part of McDonnell Douglas and before we were acquired by EDS (the first time), we developed and marketed a separate CAD system known as BDS/GDS which was designed for civil engineers, architects and facilities management, or what was lumped together under the single TLA as an AEC system. When we were acquired by EDS this product came along as part of the 'deal' but EDS had no interest in that market segment and so they sold it off a few years later to some other company and that was that. But of course, since NX (Unigraphics back then) grew up next to a fully adequate architectural CAD system there was never any need to support purely AEC type standards and that has carried forward to today.

As for the support of Feet & Inches, that came about because, like the company I worked for in the late 70's, we needed to support manufacturing companies that modeled and manufactured large structural steel weldments as part of their product designs (we produced capital machinery for the food and chemical processing industries) and standard practice in that industry segment was fractional inches up to 72 inches and then feet & inches after that (the standard answer to the question of 'why was that the case' was because a folding carpenter's rule only went up to 6 feet).

Anyway, since there are no 'mechanical' standards which support decimal feet, we've never felt obligated to support it, as even a user defined option.

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]

If you model in inches, then you could work around the problem if you work in the master model system and exclusively use solids for your geometry. A suggestion is to create the drawing with the model as a component and then promote the solids and scale them down by 1/12 factor. After the you could draw in inches and never know the difference.

A bit awkward perhaps but nevertheless if you already have the data 90% prepared it seems the easiest way out.

Cheers

Hudson