VacForm Thinning

[adam1986]

Are there any tools available within NX8.5 that could assist in creating thinned vacform surfaces?

We have created a control face but need to create a thinned offset surface to allow nests to sit flush due to the large draw distance of the vaform tool.
The thinning ranges from 0.2mm to aroun 3mm and is not constant.

The only way i have thought about doing it is to get a measurement report and put lots of offset points in and try and create surfaces, but struggling to make this into a solid with tangent faces.
(Ideally the thinned surface will be the visbale A surface so it needs to have some kind of tangency)

I am currently trying to do this in creo, which is a nightmare, but also have access to NX.

Any help would be appreciated.

Adam

 

[KhimaniMohiki]

So is the tooled face the A surface or B surface?

Khimani Mohiki
Design Engineer - Aston Martin
NX8.5

 

[adam1986]

The origianl "controlled" offset face is a B Surface - To create the vacform tool
The thinned offset face is an A Surface - To create the VacForm Nest

 

[KhimaniMohiki]

You could try a variable offset of the big patches and then use bridge surfaces, blends and N-sided surfaces to fill in between them. Alternativly this could be the ideal scenario to use Global Shaping, maybe 'Wall Deformation' or 'By Surface', have a read though 'Global Shaping Options' in the help documents, I think this is what your looking for.

Khimani Mohiki
Design Engineer - Aston Martin
NX8.5