NX9 Dimensions
NX9 Dimensions
(OP)
When placing a dimension, how do I set the number of decimal places ? In NX6, I can press the 0 thru 6 keys to make the change.
I'm also looking at switching to (maybe) Arial font. I can change the font of an NX6 created dimension, but it doesn't appear to change the font of the diameter symbol of a cylindrical dimension ?
I'm also looking at switching to (maybe) Arial font. I can change the font of an NX6 created dimension, but it doesn't appear to change the font of the diameter symbol of a cylindrical dimension ?
NX 6.0.5.3
NX 9.0.1.3
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)





RE: NX9 Dimensions
And about the font for the symbols. Did you try to change the font for Appended Text? Or did you change only for the Dimension? I guess that appended text should fix the problem.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
I did try the appended text, but that didn't help.
NX 6.0.5.3
NX 9.0.1.3
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
NX 6.0.5.3
NX 9.0.1.3
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
Use the arrow keys (Left, Right, Up & Down) to define the location of appended text.
Press <C> to clear all appended text.
Press <E> to launch the Annotation Editor.
Press <R> to reset.
Press <S> to launch the Dimension Style dialog.
Press <T> to set the tolerance decimal places.
All gone ... our users are really going to like this upgrade !
NX 6.0.5.3
NX 9.0.1.3
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
In NX 9.0, when you double-click a Dimension to edit the format, an on-screen 'edit' widget appears and from there you can edit most all the characteristics of the Dimension including adding appended text. To get an idea of how this works, watch the attached video. Note that once the widget has focus, I can move from one appended text entry field to another by simply selecting the 'tab' key. As you're watching the video, please keep in mind what I said about making the various options 'discoverable'. Try to put yourself into the shoes of a new user. Which scheme do you think you'd be able to learn to use quicker, the one you see in the video or one that depends on memorizing a bunch of arcane keyboard 'shortcut' entries?
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
NX 6.0.5.3
NX 9.0.1.3
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9F5zIKuLBw
How many new customers do you think that circa 1978 CAD software would still be able to attract today? But keep in mind that most of the companies that DID make that investment back then and purchased seats of Unigraphics, are still using them today only now it's called NX. And while virtually nothing of what you saw there still exists in terms of hardware, user interface, help files, classroom material, even many of the developers and people who sold and supported the product, even the code itself, has all but been replaced, yet the investment made by those early companies was a good one because more then user interfaces and keyboard shortcuts and workflows was maintained, and that is a continuous environment in which support was given, software was upgraded and modernized, ported to the latest hardware architectures, enhanced to take advantages of new modeling paradigms, expanded to cover not only a few designers and draftsman in some engineering office but to became the core technology used across global enterprises. Yet with all these changes the most important things were protected and maintained. And this included an assurance that those investments would be protected in terms of continuing to make available the latest technology without having to obsolete your 'legacy' data.
For example, I just tested a pre-beta development version of the next full version of NX, which most of you probably won't be installing for a year or more, by opening a Unigraphics part file (an assembly drawing showing how to mount secondary attachments and brackets to an aircraft bulkhead) which was LAST SAVED TO DISK 21 YEARS AGO! I opened this file directly, WITHOUT even having to first run it through 'refile', and it opened with no problems and I was able to double-click on any of the notes or labels (there were no actual linear dimensions since as I said, it's an assembly showing the positions of various attachments and brackets, but there are at least a hundred notes and labels) and the edit dialog that opened and the on-screen handles which were displayed and were usable, were exactly the same as if that note/label had been created 5 minutes ago. I had all the same options and could perform all the same edits and changes in appearance, font, etc. In fact, I performed a single edit, selecting all of the notes and labels, and changed them all from 'Blockfont' to the truetype 'Arial' font. Now that is that sort of return on your "maintenance dollars" that really counts. I'll put that little 'test' up against any other CAD package in the industry.
Anyway, I hope you see that our investment of the legecy user's "maintenance dollars" has been put to good use and that there is more to support than simply maintaining the status quo.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
However, the decimal point using '0-6' is history.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
"While creating or editing dimensions, you can use the Ctrl+Arrow keys to navigate to the individual Appended Text on-screen input boxes."
Maybe setting decimal places using the numeric keypad will be available in the next MR.
NX 9.0.3.4
NX 10 (Testing)
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
NX 9.0.3.4
NX 10 (Testing)
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
I don't see this as a legacy user issue either, the new people we train would love to have that old functionality.
Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
I'm sorry, but that's a totally disingenuous statement. Of course this is a "legacy user issue" since by showing your new people the OLD dialogs you've in essence made it one. After all, if they had ONLY seen the new NX 9.0 dialogs and had ONLY experienced the new workflow, there is NO way that they could have come to "love" the old functionality, now could they...
That being said, yes, we are working to improve the dialogs and workflows based on feedback from our users and if any changes are made they will be in a future release, but NOT as a simple bug fix or update to an existing version of NX which pretty much means that anything significant will not be possible until at lease the next full version after NX 10.0, which has already been released.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
In any case we happy with NX9 here on the modeling and assembly side. Drafting has gotten slower though.
Jay Miklovic
Sr. Design Engineer
Edco Inc.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
There was some feedback from the users to Siemens and Siemens is looking into these said inputs.
For your 1-6 it may be hotkeys to say alt+1 or something like this. This is the type of issues Siemens is reviewing.
There is seven pages of information in the link above. Also, I think they will be holding another webinar on this issue with follow from the first webinar. ( I am not 100% for sure but that is how the webinar left off.)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
37 years and you didn't know about this...seriously? What exactly do you mean by using?
Thank you,
Trent
NX 8.5.2.3
RE: NX9 Dimensions
Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community..
To the Toolmaker, your nice little cartoon drawing of your glass looks cool, but your solid model sucks. Do you want me to fix it, or are you going to take all week to get it back to me so I can get some work done?
RE: NX9 Dimensions
BTW, did you take advantage of the invitation to participate in the webinars that were sponsored by the Drafting Product Management team? They provided TWO forums where these and other Dimensioning issues were discussed and proposals for addressing them were offered. And these proposals are currently in the process of being implemented in the next version of NX. If you were offered the opportunity to participate and you chose not to, well I guess that does say something about how much you really want to see NX improved, now doesn't it?
As for Trent's question, of my 37 years (soon to be 38) of UG/NX experience, granted, only three of those were while working as a Machine Designer and Project Engineer (after 11 years on the board) for a large multinational corporation that manufactured commercial chemical and food processing machinery. The remainder has been as part of the organization that developed and supported UG/NX, first as a pre-sales consultant (AKA Demo Jock), then as a regional manager for the pre-sales organization and as the technical lead for the 1986/87 GM/EDS benchmark. After that I joined R&D working in various Product Management and Product Marketing roles until my current assignment. During that time, I've probably logged as many UG/NX hours as anyone else in the company. Granted, most of that time has been spent working with beta and early production versions of the software, concentrating on the modeling aspects of NX as that's the core technology, but I follow Drafting issues as well, just not as if I were actually working in a Drafting office full time.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
I've started testing NX 10.0.2.x, which is the first release which will include any of the changes proposed as a result of the Drafting Webinars that the Drafting Product Management team held late last year and earlier this year. Several improvements were made making it easier to enter and leave the editing mode and being assured the the edits will be performed.
But the biggest enhancement, at least based on reading this thread, is that now, when in the Dimension editing mode, if you wish to change the number of decimal places, all that you will need to do is hold down the 'alt' key and then select the 0-6 keys on the numeric keypad. Also, again while holding down on the 'alt' key, you can use the four 'arrow' keys to move the cursor focus 'around' the Edit Dimension dialog to where you can enter appended text.
These are some of the things which we will be covering at the upcoming PLM Connections Conference in Dallas.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
RE: NX9 Dimensions
NX 9.0.3.4
NX 10 (Testing)
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)
RE: NX9 Dimensions
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: NX9 Dimensions
NX 9.0.3.4
NX 10 (Testing)
Windows 7 64 (Windows 8.1 Tablet)