Turn off automatic unsuppress of features?

[CNSZU]

Hello,

In a part I have a suppressed blend feature at the end of the feature tree. When I unsuppress this blend, some of its parents, which are suppressed, automatically get unsuppressed as well. How can I prevent this from happening? Is there for example a way to permanently suppress a feature so that it never gets unsuppressed unless I specifically make it unsuppressed? Or perhaps a way to unsuppress a feature without automatically unsuppressing its parents as well?

NX9 Win8.1 64bit i7-3770K 16GB Quadro2000

 

[JohnRBaker]

I don't see how you could possibly unsuppress a feature without also unsuppressing it's parents. By definition, the 'parents' are just that, features which play an integral parts in the definition of the 'child' feature in the first place. Therefore, when that child feature is unsuppressed the system is being told to enable it and since those other suppressed features are PART of the definition of the feature being unsuppressed, how is it that the system should try that WITHOUT also unsuppressing it's parents? To do otherwise would be considered an error by most everyone.

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

Yes, perhaps that is true for most cases, however there are situations where it's useful to control this behavior.

For example, I have a blend feature that blends the edges of two extruded features. I later decide to suppress one of the extrudes because it's not needed, but I might need it later. That's why I suppress it, rather than deleting it. The child blend feature will now get a warning indicator, but it doesn't fail so everything is fine. Now I suppress the blend feature. Some time later I unsuppress the blend feature, but unknown to me, the extrude feature that I had suppressed earlier now is unsuppressed! For a more complex part, this is a major issue because there might be many features that get automatically unsuppressed in this manner and I wouldn't know which features got unsuppressed which then have to be suppressed again, or worse, that I continue to work on the part without knowing the features got unsuppressed.

NX9 Win8.1 64bit i7-3770K 16GB Quadro2000

 

[Shadowspawn]

Given the example you provided... Model the edges of the two extrudes with separate blends (and tie the blends together via a common expression or set the second blend size equal to the 'p' number of the first blend). Model smarter, not harder...

Regards,
SS

CAD should pay for itself, shouldn't it?

 

[JohnRBaker]

If we did provide the optional behavior that you're suggesting, I'm not sure how reliable it would be due to the complexity of the code that would have to sort out the possible versus impossible situations. I suspect that it would be very difficult to make this a reliable function, or at least to behave in the manner that you seem to think you would like it to behave in a consistent and predictable manner.

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.

 

[cowski]

Early in the design of a part, I'm often in the same situation. Here is my work-around:
When I have a feature that may or may not be used (such as your extrude) I'll rename it in the part navigator. My settings are set to "system + user", so the new name in the part navigator might look like: Extrude (22) "version1". On larger parts I'll create a filter: right click in the part navigator and choose "filter settings". Use the filter to remove all features and add only those with the name I specified (i.e. "version1"). Save the filter. After editing features, I can toggle the filter and quickly see and control the suppression status.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[CNSZU]

Thanks for the suggestions, in particular using names and filters seems like an interesting idea for managing parts.

NX9 Win8.1 64bit i7-3770K 16GB Quadro2000