NX 7.5 Sketcher has some issues

[animuL67]

This is probably going to be more of a rant than a useful post but in NX 7.5 sketcher has several bugs that are extremely annoying. First, its possible for you to have a fully constrained sketch and for NX to display "Sketch needs -2 constraints", not a big deal because it doesn't stop you in your tracks but just a silly bug. Second, its very frustrating that I can have a fully constrained sketch and add a line, not associated to anything, holding down "alt" not allowing it to make any inferred constraints then when I add a constraint to it, say make it horizontal, the sketch says its over constrained and I'm stopped dead in my tracks. This causes hours of hassle and wasted money. I've been using Unigraphics for 7 years and have NEVER come across these issues so it really irks me to have to deal with this. I don't even know how many thousands of dollars a month we spend on NX with our 10 or so stations but its enough to expect not having these kinds of issues.

 

[MickyV007]

Could you please provide us an example of this behavior? And BTW what Mp are you on?

Best regards,

Michaël.

NX7.5.4.4 + TC Unified 8.3
Win 7 64 bit

 

[animuL67]

Mp? Modeling package I guess? I am in bundle: NX11110. its difficult to provide an example because of the proprietary nature of the data. Working more with this sketch I ran into another glitch where I have a fully constrained sketch and add a lines, then make it coincident with another line, no problems, then tell it to be vertical and suddenly it says over constrained and after deleting the line it still says over constrained. I have turned off auto dimensions and auto constraints and the problem persists. Even if I try to get the geometry where it needs to be in another manner, say instead of using the equal length constraint on two lines, I actually dimentioned them both, it will say over constrained. I'll see if I can take a video of whats going on w/o revealing sensitive data...

 

[MickyV007]

MP means Maintenance Package, you find this in the menu Help , about NX.
The latest version of NX7.5 is (correct me if i'm wrong) 7.5.5, which includes all the bug fixes and Mp's.
You could download it from the GTAC site.
And yes a video could come in handy to understand your problem. Or you could create a test file, or is it part dependent?

Best regards,

Michaël.

NX7.5.4.4 + TC Unified 8.3
Win 7 64 bit

 

[JohnRBaker]

Have you considered contacting GTAC with your sketch problems?

If they are as irritating and apparently as easy to reproduce as you describe them, then it would seem that it would not take the people at GTAC much time at all to either suggest how you can avoid these issues or if it proves to actually be a problem with the code, get development to verify that and get some idea as to when they will be able to fix it.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[animuL67]

Im on 7.5.2.5 eng-tips upload failed but I uploaded the vid to my youtube. I cant access youtube at work so I hope this is right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGG92PQTMTk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Sorry for the poor quality, my phone was having issues dealing with the contrast. Anyway, you see that the sketch is fully constrained. I add a line that is coincident with another and vertical but do not allow it to be associated to anything in any other way. It causes the sketch to become inexplicably over constrained. Deleting the line leaves the sketch over constrained. I get the same result if I remove all auto constraints and create the line, then add constraints manually. Its especially annoying since you can see that I already created the same feature on the other side of my sketch.

 

[MEace]

I'm having the same issue as you animu.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The 'video' that was posted was next to worthless.

Are you aware that there's a built-in video capture feature in NX 7.5? Why not use that to capture a visual record of the problems that you say you're having?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MEace]

I found my issues were tied to automatic inferred constraints that I found quite unintuitive. Showing all constraints helped me get started on finding the issues, but I had to really dig in and investigate each feature in the sketch to resolve the issues.

I ended up leaving the often helpful autoconstraint features off for more complicated sketches to ensure I have full control and am not surprised.

 

[JohnRBaker]

That's why me make those 'auto'-whatever options optional.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cowski]

You can also hold down the Alt key while sketching to override the inferred autoconstraints, it is like turning off autoconstraints temporarily on the fly. I don't know if it also overrides the autodimensions because I turned those off right away.

 

[deedub777]

@cowski, I did exactly that when I first started using NX. I was encouraged to go back and turn it on and found it was my inexperience that was the problem. Now I let auto dim do what it's good at, give it another try!