Uniting a very large array of cylinders
Uniting a very large array of cylinders
(OP)
Hello,
So, I've got a huge array of cylinders positioned in a 3D structure (Think 3D spider's web). I'm fairly confident that each cylinder touches its neighbours and so if I were to manually perform a series of Unions then I would get a single solid body out of it at the end. That would take far too long though! Is there any means within NX5.05 to achieve something like a 'Merge All' command available through some hidden-away menu, UDF or GRIP? As far as I'm aware, things must be selected in the correct order when Uniting multiple bodies, something which would be far too time-comsuming!
Cheers,
James
So, I've got a huge array of cylinders positioned in a 3D structure (Think 3D spider's web). I'm fairly confident that each cylinder touches its neighbours and so if I were to manually perform a series of Unions then I would get a single solid body out of it at the end. That would take far too long though! Is there any means within NX5.05 to achieve something like a 'Merge All' command available through some hidden-away menu, UDF or GRIP? As far as I'm aware, things must be selected in the correct order when Uniting multiple bodies, something which would be far too time-comsuming!
Cheers,
James





RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders
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.
RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders
NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard
RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders
Another idea is that if the web is basically regular in shape then it may be described as conical. If that were the case you can often create a portion, then you may need to group some of the features, but the idea is to instance the feature or the geometry so that you have the same result with fewer booleans. It is large numbers of booleans that take up a lot of time and memory in order to compute.
Cheers
Hudson
RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders
Cheers