Measuring MINIMUM wall thickness on NX6

[jamieedodger]

I'm looking for a way to measure wall thickness in Seiemens NX6 - I found below, which helped - but I can't seem to get it to show me the MINIMUM wall thickness, it outputs MAX and AVERAGE every time - with no minimum. When you click the inspect tab it does say outputting min and max, but nothing comes of it - and they aren't selectable options. Help?!

"Depending on what version of NX you're running, if it's one of the more recent one and you have the Studio Design module you may have a function which will measure the wall thickness of any entire part and display the values as a color-coded fringe plot. Check to see if you can access...

Analysis -> Molded Part Validation...

...and if this dialog opens, select the Analysis Type 'Thickness' and if there's only one body in the part file it will be selected automatically so all you have to do is select the 'Calculate Thickness' button (it the icon on the left that looks like a 'calculator').

If you don't own the correct modules, then there is very little that can be done to find model thicknesses, at least not without a lot of drudge work. From JohnRBaker"

 

[JohnRBaker]

On that 'Inspect' tab, there is an item named 'Thickness Range' which will probably show 0.00 to whatever the Maximum actuallu is. The reason it shows 0.00 is because there's always a corner edge or something where technically the material thickness actually IS zero. But what you can is toggle this 'Thickness Range' ON and then change the 'Low/High' values of the range that you would like to limit the output display to. Generally, if it's minimums that you're looking for, change the 'High' value incrementally, selecting 'Apply' after each change, to see where the minimums are until you get down to where, except for the obvious edges, you can see where the minimums are and what there values are based on the legend colors. BTW, if you use the 'Calculation Method' of 'Ray' it will minimize the highlighting of those 'zero thickness' edges but you'll probably still get a minimum of 0.00.

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.

 

[jamieedodger]

Thanks John appreciate the quick reply on a Friday! I feared this might be the only way to do it and I guess it would be difficult for the program to determine where parts "edges" are. Out of interest, are there any developments on the tool in later versions of NX?

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, here's something that you can do, even with NX 6.0.

After you've used the 'Molded Part Validation' tool and you've narrowed it down to where on your model the thinnest section is probably located, or at least you've identified the two faces where the closest point might reside. Now go to...

Analysis -> Measure Distance...

...and set the 'Measurement' option to 'Minimum' and in the 'Results Display', set the 'Annotation' option to 'Create Line'. Now select your two prospective faces and not only will you see the value of the minimum distance displayed, you'll also have a dashed-line object (non-associative) created between the two points of closest approach.

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.