×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Uniting a very large array of cylinders

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

RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders

In NX 6 the order of selection is no longer as critical as before and the results, even if you select 2 or MORE Tool bodies, will always be a single Unite Feature.  Now the actual complexity of the model will not be reduced all that much since the number of edges and faces will be the same as if it were being done in NX 5, but the structure of the model will be simpler and as I mentioned, the user no longer has to be as concerned about the order in which Tool Bodies are selected.

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

Make a thin solid "plate" behind the cylinders, unite all cylinders to an extracted copy of the plate (this way selection order will not create errors), then subtract the original plate.   

NX 5.0.3.2 MoldWizard

RE: Uniting a very large array of cylinders

Depending on the nature of your structure the above suggestion may work.

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

(OP)
Thanks for the tips. The nature of the structure means that the plate technique will not work, nor is it regular. The improvements to the Unite feature in NX6 sounds promising, I'll look forward to my organisation obtaining it.

Cheers

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources