Drafting: define a view
Drafting: define a view
(OP)
In drafting, is there a way to take an arbitrary view of the part and define it as the 'front' view then generate a trimetric view from that?
I seem to remember reading about some feature like this in either the NX5 or 6 marketing literature, but cannot find anything in the help files. I am currently running NX6.
I seem to remember reading about some feature like this in either the NX5 or 6 marketing literature, but cannot find anything in the help files. I am currently running NX6.





RE: Drafting: define a view
Assemblies -> Component -> Move Component...
...the 'Component' around in the Drawing Assembly (but you must have toggled OFF the display of the Drawing sheet first) until you have oriented the Component relative to the DRAWING Assembly's Absolute CSYS in the manner in which you wish it to be. Generally speaking, if there is some specific 'feature' on the model which you wish to be shown in what we used to call 'true view' back in my drafting board days, your best bet would be use the Reposition option as this will allow you to align X-Y references in your model with the X-Y references of the Absolute CSYS of the Drawing Assembly.
Anyway, give it try and see if this provides you with what you need.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
Is there a way to make your own 'canned views' as described in the first post (or maybe that was just for modeling)?
RE: Drafting: define a view
As for creating a set of user defined views which you can use instead of the default views, while it's possible, the system will still consider the Absolute X-Y plane as being the default 'Top View' orientation no matter what and therefore all of the other 'canned' views will key off of it.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
RE: Drafting: define a view
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
RE: Drafting: define a view
Now I expect that is a little more trouble than having everything always done automatically for you by your templates, but compared to moving the model off absolute in order to align it to the canned views, then IMHO the effort is about the same.
I'd add that I usually work to a project absolute co-ordinate system meaning that static parts often don't need to be mated in assemblies. For larger projects such as automotive design this has always made sense. So I would use the above described method most of the time, and I have never suffered any difficulties as a result.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: Drafting: define a view
However, you should keep tabs on our website...
http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/
...since as soon as there is anything to be said about this and other aspects of the NX 7.5 release, this is where you will see this information first.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
RE: Drafting: define a view
RE: Drafting: define a view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection
Still looking for the trimetric view.
RE: Drafting: define a view
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
RE: Drafting: define a view
I know that you're no slouch so you must want to do this for some kind of reason. So humour me and riddle me this... What's so useful about a technically isometric view as opposed to something that looks near enough. I just don't have that much use for them besides illustrative purposes?
Like many people I usually add a view in the top right hand corner of my drawing sheet just to show what the part looks like. It is just for illustration purposes. So I simply add a base view and then use the orient view tool to manually rotate the part into a position that shows enough of the part to illustrate what it looks like. I have never been able to set up a template file that successfully guesses this for me so I'm as happy to spend a couple of seconds doing it myself.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: Drafting: define a view
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
Agreed! But then the GM system to which I gather you refer relies upon actually modelling in Car Line (Absolute), as I referred to earlier.
If we're talking about fasteners or the odd generic part then I don't know that it matters. I guess that anything else modelled close to absolute and then mated into an installed orientation that was required to be reflected in a drawing view probably needs to be copied from the assembly and pasted to the master model method drawing assembly in order to maintain the correct spatial attitude. I didn't think that was what Cowski was getting at but if it does matter to some users then I don't think we explored that option before.
For the record in automotive work the likelihood is that unless the part is first used elsewhere the preference or requirement will be to move the geometry inside the component part file to the installed location relative the Car Line absolute so-ordinate system.
Anyway I hope that offers some insight as to your options.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: Drafting: define a view
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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: Drafting: define a view
My question has technically been answered, but I'll give a little background to hopefully clear things up. The company I work for makes small consumer goods and 90%+ of the parts are unique to each model, so we create them in 3D space 'where they belong' which avoids much hassle with assembly constraints. We use master model for our drawings which generally have a front, right, top, and a trimetric view of the part. The trimetric view serves as a pictoral view of the part, but we also use it to call out surface finish and textures for the cosmetic surfaces. I will reorient the part to get the important features in the dimension views, occasionally either the front view that I want for dimensioning will not lead to the trimetric view that gives the most information or the part will require callouts on the front and back so I will use multiple trimetric views. I have been rotating it to something close in modeling, saving the view, and adding it to the drawing. I was hoping there was a way to snap to a 'new front view' and generate a trimetric view off of that. I don't work to a drafting standard that has well defined definitions for pictoral views, I was just hoping to speed up drawing creation a little bit and make the views look more consistent.
On my journey of discovery with Wikipedia, I got a good refresher on axonometric views. If you rotate the model such that all 3 axes (X, Y, Z) are foreshortened equally, you end up with an isometric (same measure) view. When 2 of the axes have the same measure it is a dimetric view, and when the 3 axes have different measures it is a trimetric view. There is a well defined set of rotations to get an isometric view, but there is an infinite number of possibilities for a trimetric view. I had mistakenly thought that a trimetric view was a certain (but different) set of rotations than an isometric view. Another thanks to John for telling us the rotations that NX uses in its definition.
RE: Drafting: define a view
Now that you've read up on it and understood all of the possibilities. I have created something for you that if you import it into your drawing templates will furnish them with all the extra views that you could probably ever want. Make sure to tick on the Import Views and Cameras option and you should be good to go.
Best Regards
Hudson
www.jamb.com.au
Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum
RE: Drafting: define a view