Best way to teach students how to create a wing model

[disbecknell]

I'm hoping to lead my university class through the process of creating an airfoil profile, extruding it into a solid body, meshing that body, and running some load simulations. I am learning the software myself, and using version 8.5 since that's what Siemens has made available to our students for free.

So far, I can File > Import > Points from file... to insert the points that make up the airfoil profile, and Insert > Curve > Fit Curve... to generate a curve through the points with a specified order and tolerance. I can even Mirror that curve to create a symmetric airfoil (NACA0015).

Then, I can extrude the curve to create a solid body, and Start a New Simulation and FEM project.

However, when I try to Mesh the FEM, the body I created isn't able to be selected as the body to mesh. Any idea why this is happening?

On a separate but related note, since I'm teaching students, what is the EASIEST POSSIBLE WAY to accomplish this, if what I'm doing is not that? For example, to access the 'Fit Curve' option, I have to choose an 'Advanced with Full Menus' role... but honestly I think everything else (besides Fit Curve) is available in the 'Essentials' role. Any other tips are appreciated, and thanks for all informative forum threads that got me this far.

 

[disbecknell]

To answer my own (first) question, it was because my sketch was not a closed profile, i.e. there was no solid body to mesh.

 

[Toost]

Can you try RMB the fem-part, -"make work part" before trying to mesh ?
If my guess is correct, you are supposed to create the Mesh in the Fem part and not in the sim-part.
"Make work part" makes all new objects created go into the ( be saved in ) the selected file.

You should be able to mesh Sheet bodies as well, but not with Tet -elements.

The roles in NX is a bit of a "Catch 22", The purpose is to simplify the user interface for new users. NX will after install start with the role "essentials"
Then , after becoming more and more familiar with NX the user is supposed to change , either to a different role with more commands, or create a role of his own with the buttons needed visible.
The catch 22 is that the user needs to know pretty much about NX to understand and use the roles, and the new user doesn't know that he/she needs them yet.

You can as system manager create new default roles, which the users can select. In the NX7.5 (which i run) there is no way ( without editing the Windows registry) to set a "default role". - I prefer to stay away from the registry as much as possible.
Maybe there have been a change in later versions on this.

Regards,
Tomas