WAVE geometry to a part family template

[BOPdesigner]

In NX 6 I have an assembly that has a component which is a member of a part family, and therefore this component is read only. What I need to do however is WAVE some of the geometry from other parts in the assembly into the part family template to drive some feature locations in the part family. What I have tried initially is replacing the read only component in the assembly with its parent template part, then Waving the geometry, saving the template, and then replacing the component back to the original read only family member. Next I have to go into the template part and fix the broken wave link to reference the geometry that I need which is now in a non displayed part. This seems to work OK as long as you are careful about your part origins and how they relate to the assembly. Is anybody aware of a cleaner (easier and more robust) way to accomplish this task?

 

[hudson888]

Riddle me why you need to do something so complex?
There are probably a number of ways to set up a possible solution, but I'm only really interested in typing the answer once for the most appropriate one. Thus far I've never heard of anyone needing to do such a thing.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[BOPdesigner]

I have a sheet metal rack that is populated with various electronic cards (modules). The racks come in 4 different widths to support 4 different module configurations. Each rack has the same main features but the width and other parameters vary. In the back of the rack are cutouts for connectors for the backplane to the modules. During the concept phase of the design, the placement of these connectors may shift around as the ECAD designers optomize their placement based on where they need to run traces on the backplane PCB. So I want to WAVE some of the connector geometry from the backplane into the sheet metal rack to serve as a reference for the position of the cutouts required for the connectors. Another possible way to do this may be to wave the read only part member, with all the generic features from the template, into a new part file and then apply the WAVE links to the connectors in that new part file. Just trying to think through the best approach without getting too twisted up with WAVE.

 

[hudson888]

Yes it sounds like you are getting a little twisted up in wave. I think that if the connector geometry is generic and changes only very rarely then you'd be somewhat justified in linking it but allowing the links to be broken or frozen for convenience sake and to strike a balance where you can update the geometry but wouldn't need to maintain it automatically. To freeze links you need the advanced license for the Associativity Manager, but if you simply break the links, then as long as you've an assembly in place that you can use to maintain the relative orientation of link and linked then you can make the edits on a needs be basis.

If on the other hand the geometry of the connectors moves relative to the backplane then you probably want to either link or promote some of those part family members to have different openings for the connectors shown in a variety of configurations too numerous to manage any other way.

Either way I'd avoid live linked geometry in part families for reason of convenience since as you mentioned it is created as read only. When and if you have updates to perform I'd go in and recreate all the part family members at once as your means to publishing the updates.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum