conditional material assignment

[multicaduser]

Dealing with material assignments for the first time, is it possible to change material assigned to a body based on and expression or attribute? Probably just not looking in the right place in the docs but I'm not coming up with anything. We have many components who's design is the same but materials vary depending on the application, and this is something that automation would help with in avoiding incorrect material assignment.....if possible. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[JohnRBaker]

When you say material assignment, are we talking about assigning a material for FEA purposes or just to get the density correct when performing mass property calculations? If it's for FEA purposes, there's nothing in NX itself to do that but you could probably create some sort of NX Open or KF (Knowledge Fusion) application which might be able to provide something like that. Now if it's just for mass property purposes, this is supported again either with NX Open/KF or as part of defining a Part Family where standard parts can have a different 'material' assigned (in the form of setting the model's density) for different family members.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[multicaduser]

Hi John, thanks for your prompt answer. This is just for mass properties. We don't have an authoring license for NX Open/KF, just grip, and part families is not a good fit in the current work flow (will have to re-examine that). Looks like it will have to be a macro or journal for now. Not quite fully automatated but closer.

We are on 8.5 right now, has this changed in 9.0?

 

[JohnRBaker]

If you're just looking for a way to assign the proper material density, that can be done using the...

Tools -> Material -> Assign Materials...

...functionality. However, it's linking it to an expression or attribute, with the exception of the Part Family scheme, that would require some sort of user-developed application.

Note that while you can set a model's density using GRIP, if you wanted this to be fully automatic, you'd need to do something like launching a program every time you saved a part to update the density based on a change made to an expression/attribute during the current modeling session.

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.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And no, there were no changes made in NX 9.0 which would have any impact on this.

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.

 

[kapmnit123]

Hi Multicaduser,
OOTB i am not sure if this is feasible but it certainly is achievable using Knowledge fusion. I am furnishing one movie herewith. You will notice that depending on the expression value (test=1/2/3) the material will change.
I checked it in NX8 only.
Best Regards
Kapil