Through my experience with process design, modeling, and automation, I have found a means of designing with a modular process that empowers the NX user to save and reuse design processes. The process is refined over time through the reuse and tuning/updates saved to the template. I will show the use of base and extract features with the selection intent set to “feature,” which allows the deletion of entire sketches and recreation without breaking downstream features. Customers are importing parts from multi-cad systems where the parts are located randomly in the absolute coordinate system. This normally takes locating the stock to part and part to vise but I will show how to get this process down to 3 face selections and automating the locating process.
Points of interest
- It is a process of structuring features that are flexible.
- It is not only for like parts. The parts can be drastically different.
- The feature group’s flexibility and usability can be tested by copying and pasting within the same part or to a different part.
- The foundation of creating feature stability is looking for feature types that support the selection intent of a feature, or group. This means that it will collect all geometry from the feature and not by geometry ID. For example, if it is a sketch, it will collect all items from the sketch regardless of if they have been deleted or recreated.
- There will be instances where the geometry from the feature will need to be collected into an extract feature group.