sketching nx4 2

[romerito]

hello, ive been working on the sketch of an hexagonal bolt, i need the hexagon to be centered around the (x,y) axis but everytime i change the dimensions of the height of the exagon the whole hexagon dissorts and move from the axis, can someone please tell me the contraints i have to do in order to fx it?

 

[hudson888]

Do you have any exiting part families. Most people have copies of such things on their system. The case is simply that if you did you'd find they contain a number of Socket Head Cap Screws and Hex Head Bolts replete with examples of well sketched hexagons.

With NX-5 I know that some were distributed with the product release. So if you're still on NX-4 even doing a search *.prt on you install directory is likely to pick up some kind of example that you can use.

I'm sure somebody will post you something on here anyway, but the hint that a a little detective work is often worth a try may come in handy. Sorry I can't drop you a file at the minute we're kind of off-site.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[JohnRBaker]

Attached is an NX 4 part file containing a sketched hexagon which will behave as I think you want it to.

BTW, when you upgrade to either NX 5 or NX 6, let know and I'll send you an example of a Parametric N-sided Polygon.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

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

 

[mmauldin]

I take a different route for creating hexagons. It takes fewer explicit constraints and less actual drawing.

I created this file in NX5, but the jpegs show the step to take. Since I am in NX5, I am able to start the first line at the datum point of the Datum Coordinate System. I don't remember if NX4 had the Datum Coordinate System functionality. If not you will need to constrain the center point as point-on-line to the X and Y datums, or coincident to whatever geometry is available. I suspect that this is what you need to do to fully constrain your current sketch.

This technique can be used for other polygons, just add more mirrors as needed (you may have to add more lines to support the extra mirrors).

John, why hold back? There are plenty of NX5 and 6 users who would like to see your parametric n-sided polygon example.

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, here's the NX 5 model of an N-Sided Polygon. There are 2 user parameters, the 'Inscribed Diameter' and the 'Number of Sides'.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

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

 

[potrero]

John and mmauldin, thanks for sharing. Instance Geometry is great...

By the way, why is it that in NX, one can't create associative patterns within Sketcher? You can do Mirrors of entities in a Sketch, so why not patterns of entities?

 

[JohnRBaker]

MM, your approach reminded me of how I solved the 3D problem of modeling a Soccer Ball several years ago. This was during the World Cup back in 2002 when one of our clients was looking for a model of a Soccer Ball where they could parametrically edit its size. Since the actual shape and details of a Soccer Ball never changes from one size to another, the final model only had to have a parameter which controlled the diameter. So I created my model and then blew-away the features and then added a single scale feature which would take whatever diameter value entered and convert it into the appropriate scale factor for the Scale feature.

Attached is a UG V17.0 model of the final parametric 'Soccer Ball'.



John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

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

 

[JohnRBaker]

There are limitations with creating 'features' inside of 'features' such as creating instance arrays inside of the sketch. The mirror we handle with constraints, but a general array capability would require much more than that. That being said, we are looking into some alternative approaches, but we can't make any promises.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

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