Managing large assemblies is a significant challenge in CAD environments. Engineers often face long load times, sluggish performance, and difficulties navigating complex models. At Applied CAx, we understand these pain points and are here to help you streamline your workflow with NX. In this post, we’ll explore three primary topics to help streamline large assembly management:
- Simplify Assembly
- Wrap Assembly
- Linked Exterior
The challenge of large assemblies
Large assemblies can contain thousands of components, ranging from fasteners to intricate subassemblies. As design complexity increases, so does the demand on your CAD system. Engineers frequently report excessive load times—sometimes stretching to hours—just to access models. This downtime affects productivity, delaying design iterations and impacting project timelines.
NX tackles these issues head-on by providing specialized tools that optimize assembly performance without compromising design integrity.
Simplify Assembly
What is Simplify Assembly?
Simplify Assembly allows users to simplify the complexity of a larger assembly by taking a subcomponent and reducing its features.
For example, a 160-body assembly with 79 fasteners, 10 springs, and 10 pens can be reduced to 48 bodies with only nine fasteners, zero springs, and three pens. That is a 70% reduction in part count, which directly correlates to load time.
This tool works by enabling users to define what level of detail they need by setting rules for feature removal (e.g., “Remove holes smaller than 45mm”). The result is a leaner model that still accurately represents the overall structure but loads significantly faster.
Benefits of Simplify Assembly:
- Sub-assemblies with component/feature-dense designs
- Reduces components based on user-defined envelope size
- Fill holes based on user-defined diameter
- Simplified sub-assembly will remain and be represented by simplified bodies with reduced features and components
- Simplify Assembly works best when interactions between surrounding models are fully defined
Wrap Assembly
What is Wrap Assembly?
Wrap Assembly is most useful when working with subcomponents that have a fully defined interaction with the larger assembly. This feature generates a sheet body wrapped around a sub-assembly, creating a rough exterior representation for simplification. It is used to “shrink wrap” the sub-assembly.
Benefits of Wrap Assembly:
- Allows for the envelope of the sub-assembly to be used and seen at the top level
- Allows for a visual keep-out zone of the sub-assembly
- Takes away all part definition
- Benefits come when a sub-assembly is fully defined, and a placeholder needs to be used
Linked Exterior
What is Linked Exterior?
Linked Exterior creates an exterior shell of a sub-assembly by extracting selected faces to generate sheet bodies for a more accurate envelope. This method is especially useful for models requiring exterior shell references and allows for faces to be extracted without holes if needed.
Benefits of Linked Exterior:
- When used, it gives a fully defined exterior of a sub-assembly
- Ideal for keeping the exterior surface definition of the sub-assembly while omitting the interior components
- Works best for applications when the sub-assembly is interacting with surrounding components and the interior components are not being referenced
Conclusion
Large assemblies are an unavoidable challenge in modern engineering, but NX provides powerful tools to mitigate long load times and improve workflow efficiency. By leveraging Simplify Assembly, Wrap Assembly, and Linked Exterior, users can drastically reduce file sizes and open times while maintaining the critical aspects of their designs.
If you’re struggling with long load times and complex assemblies in NX, these features are essential for optimizing performance.
Interested in learning more? Contact Applied CAx today for expert guidance on improving your NX workflows!
By Corey Brown
Design & Manufacturing Engineer