Friday, June 26, 2009

Using revisions in native NX

For those who don't have Teamcenter, there's a way to have NX recognize your part numbering/revisioning scheme. Here is one scenario :

assembly1__01.prt
|_mypart1234__01.prt
|_otherpart1235__01.prt

The numbering scheme here is, "partnumber__revisionID.prt"

Suppose you open mypart1234_01.prt without the assembly, and save it as mypart1234__02.prt. Normally, you would need to open the assembly, and replace the 01 revision with 02.

With the revision logic setup, if your load options say "load latest" and "allow substitution", mypart1234__02 will load automatically without doing the part replacement..


How do we set it up?

First open your customer defaults. Go to Assemblies - Site Standards - Part Name Versions.
Fill this window :

Full Part File Name Format :
([a-hj-np-z0-9A-Z]+)(__([0-9][0-9]))

Version independent section of part file name
\1

Part File Name Match
\1(__([0-9][0-9]))

Version section of the part file name match
\2


Version type
Alphanumeric

What we say here, is that the full part name (mypart1234__01) consists of any number of small/capital letters/numbers followed by a double underscore, and a 2 digit numeric revision ID. The way we say it is, "Regular Expressions", a very detailed method of specifying patterns like these.

Now that you've set your customer defaults, next step is making sure that your load options say "load latest" and "allow substitution". Also, you should not be using "As Saved". Instead, you can load from a folder or search directories.

How it works is, when you are loading the component mypart1234__02, NX knows that the part name portion is mypart1234, and the revision is 02. Listing all the parts that matches the pattern mypart1234__[revid] , it loads the latest one. So it is very imporant that you should name your parts according to this pattern. For example, the number of underscores should be exactly 2, or there should not be a letter in your revision ID etc.

It seems this functionality has been available for a long time, only to be found in the depths of your UGDOCS installation..

Monday, June 15, 2009

Hole Table functionality without the Mold Wizard license

Here's one reason to consider upgrading to NX6.0.3.

You can now insert a hole table just like the mold-wizard-people do by setting the following environment variable :

UGII_DRAFTING_HOLE_TABLE = 1