×
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

Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

(OP)
Any clues how to quickly figure this out because we are about to ditch trying to constrain parts. I was off a few months and come back to be forced to use assembly constraints and boy does it suck. I have spent about an hour trying to correctly position sheet metal parts with odd angles and it will turn it everyway but the way I want. If I align to one side it flips it upside down , if I try to use distance then it moves into space. I just don't understand how and why it has gotten so difficult. I would think I could align a couple faces and call it done. We are concluding  it is not worth the time wasted trying to constrain while production is waiting for the parts to build protypes. What a shame that the tool is too difficult to use, smaller companies cannot afford the expensive training and the documentation is difficult to decifer. Probabaly user error but after 15 years on UG i would think I am at the very least average in ability why would you create a program that the average user can waste hours trying to figure out. I see solid works coming in our near future.

RE: Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

1 word: practice

Once you understand how it works, it's really not that hard.

If something flips upside down it's probably because you gave it the wrong constraint. Don't forget that there's a button to get the alternative option of a constraint.

Although I do have to agree on the distance one. It has happened to me as well. Quick solution is to first measure the distance between 2 parts before you apply the distance constraint.

NX 7.5
Teamcenter 8

RE: Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

(OP)
Thanks I guess i will have to practice on my own time. For now I have to get this out the door constraint less...Just seems like if you say touch align face to face it is a no brainer..thanks for your reply.

RE: Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

'Touch' will force the face normals to point toward each other, 'Align' will force the face normals to point in the same direction.

RE: Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

I don't know if this is of help, but I always drag the parts to constrain below the parent part in the assembly tree. It's not too much of a solution, because the constrains are lost when I move the parts to the correct position in the tree again. But still I use this method a lot because it is faster than move.

RE: Assembly constraints?? Why so difficult?

Kim, if your company will go for it, model everything in 3D space. Then only fasteners will have to be constrained. You are right it sucks. All to often when you go to assign a constraint THE WRONG PART MOVES. Ok, no brainer, I will select them in the opposite order. HAH, same thing. Then after you nail a bunch in place one will go bad. Happy hunting. Especially, if the error is from a sub-component filtering up to the parent.

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