Can you use General Relinker when input bodies get consumed?

[GuyUK]

I am using General Relinker to manage wave links in an assembly. I have several simple parts which all get linked into one part which unites/patches them together.

General Relinker doesn't find the bodies for any inputs that are consumed by booleans or patches in the model. I have two workarounds:
Rolling back to the wave links, before the booleans occur, and running General relinker from there.
OR
Extracting each input body and leaving the original body intact, in which case General Relinker works on a fully rolled through model.

Is there another way or is this a limitation of General Relinker?

I am using NX9.0

Thanks,

Guy

NX9.0 TC10

 

[cowski]

When defining or editing the link, you can use the "at timestamp" option. This will link the body before it gets united/patched/etc.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[GuyUK]

Hi Cowski,

I meant to say, thank you for the extremely fast response to the question! Unfortunately your solution wasn't quite what I was looking for. The uniting/patching occurs in the destination part, that contains the 'Linked Body' features, not the source part.

I have done some more digging, and what seems to be happening is as follows. Suppose you have a model with two bodies, one containing a simple extrude, the other a single wave link:

Body_A

Extrude (1)​

Body_B_IN

Linked Body (2) [->Body_B_OUT]​

If you unite "Body_B_IN" to "Body_A", "Body_B_IN" effectively disappears as far as General Relinker is concerned, and now "Body_A" contains the Linked Body:

Body_A

Extrude (1)​

Unite​

(Body_B_IN)​

Linked Body (2) [->Body_B_OUT]​

So when you run General Relinker, it can't find Body_B_IN so the links are not replaced.

Slightly more alarmingly... if Body_A is named with a valid input name i.e. Body_A_IN, General Relinker will search for ALL Linked Body features and replace them All with a link to Body_A_OUT.

Body_A_IN

Linked Body (1) [->Body_A_OUT]​

Body_B_IN

Linked Body (2) [->Body_B_OUT]​

Unite Body_B_IN to Body_A_IN

Body_A_IN

Linked Body (1) [->Body_A_OUT]​

Unite​

(Body_B_IN)​

Linked Body (2)[->Body_A_OUT]​

I consider this behaviour to be a bug in NX9.0, and hope it would be resolved in future releases, but I have a reasonable workaround which is to extract all linked bodies and rename them:

Body_A_IN

Linked Body (1) [->Body_A_OUT]​

Body_B_IN

Linked Body (2) [->Body_B_OUT]​

Body_A

Extracted Body (3) [->Body_A_IN]​

Body_B

Extracted Body (4) [->Body_B_IN]​

Unite Body_B to Body_A:

Body_A

Extracted Body (3) [->Body_A_IN]​

Unite​

(Body_B)​

Extracted Body (4)[->Body_B_IN]​

General Relinker then works a treat, the only downsides being additional complexity in creating and naming the Extracted Bodies, and the fact that the model size is doubled.

Regards,

Guy

NX9.0 TC10