Wide flat stuctures (assemblies) and mating conditions 2

[SiW979]

To improve the way we work with variant configurations over our machine ranges we are trying to create wide shallow structures of modular installation assemblies which also should ultimately reduce the amount of time we spend revising parent assemblies when we make a modification to a very low level component or assembly.

This works great for product configuration and we can easily then share nice modular sub-assemblies across machines ranges and even different products. However this leaves us in a bit of a predicament when it comes to mating our assemblies together. In our company standards we state that mating conditions should never be applied across assemblies, infact Whilst NX will let you apply them across assembiles, they aren't really much use as it will flash up a warning saying that you are mating outside of the current assembly etc, etc. If you accept the warning, NX will subtract some linked faces from the grayed out component (which is a pain when it's a plate with holes etc as the face that is extracted becomes a solid sheet minus the holes)and then if the componenet that you supposedly mated to moves, your newly added part will not move with it.

So what we are begnining to end up with is lots of nice, neat, small fully mated assemblies that are positoned non-associately to one another and therefore are subject to becoming out of position if someone move the holes in another components etc.

So am I missing something? or has Siemens not quite got mating conditions working correctly? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards

Simon (NX4.0.4.2 MP4 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but rather how many times it's taken away...

 

[JohnRBaker]

What you really need to do is move up to at least NX 5 since while we haven't actually obsoleted 'Mating Conditions', starting with NX 5 we've introduced a new, more modern architecture which we call 'Assembly Constraints' (note that you will be able to convert your existing Mating Conditions to Assembly Constraints if you choose to move to this new scheme). Now I'm not claiming that NX 5 'Assembly Constraints' will address ALL of your issues, but before I'd invest any more time or effort into developing an alternative approach that supports your product work-flow I would want to be using the tools that are based on the latest go-forward technology and not something which will eventually be relegated to a semi-supported legacy status.

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]

Simon,

I have been using Assembly Constraints in NX-5 for a couple of projects since John and I worked through an interesting example on the forum here and I found it was at least as capable as mating but much more flexible.

The translation from one to the other works quite well. There is the odd case where the correlation between the two requires a different approach but I only found it to apply to universal ball joints so you probably shouldn't worry too much.

Since you're on NX-4 my advice would be to install NX-5 and experiment with it. Get to know what is available and how it may change your method of working when you go to NX-5. This doesn't mean you have to upgrade straight away, as you may wish to skip NX-5 and go straight to NX-6. However you should think about what strategy you'll likely adopt with assembly structures post NX-4.

One of the biggest problems with Mating conditions and assembly structures in general is that engineers would typically want to construct assemblies differently that the way that the purchasing department choose to write the Bill or Materials. Assembly constraints may sometimes help get around those problems by being a bit more flexible.

Frankly what we have often done is to construct layouts or engineering assemblies for use throughout the development stages of a product. In these we chose to defy some standards that would intend to make things maintainable. We only break out the variants and construct drawn assemblies at the last possible moment because they're just not as easy to work with no matter what you do.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[SiW979]

John/Hudson

Many thanks for your advice, as it happens, I'm fortunate to have both NX5 and NX6 on my 'sandpit' box so I'll export a few assemblies and have a fiddle.

Best regards

Simon (NX4.0.4.2 MP4 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but rather how many times it's taken away...

 

[SiW979]

John/Hudson

I've been messing around with the assembly constraints in NX5 and 6 but I've so far failed to find away to postion a component using the assembly constraints to another component in another, inactive assembly. Am I missing something as I've searched through the help docs and I nothing is jumping out at me in terms of instructions. May thanks in advance.

Best regards

Simon (NX4.0.4.2 MP4 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but rather how many times it's taken away...