PLM Exchange

To tell NX that you have a different location for you custom templates, set a variable: UGII_TEMPLATE_DIR=<directory of templates>

This needs to be set in your ugii_env.dat file, so that it is consistent with Teamcenter integration and Native NX.

The Template folder for Native and Teamcenter looks for a .pax file.

For Teamcenter pax files: (start with nxdm)

• nxdm_ugs_drawing_templates.pax
• nxdm_ugs_model_templates.pax

For Native pax files:

• ugs_drawing_templates.pax
• ugs_model_templates.pax

Within each of these pax files points to the name, and location of the files to be used. The Teamcenter files are pointed to Teamcenter Item/IDs with the syntax of @DB\ITEM_ID\REV

Set a variable: UGII_ENV_FILE=<location>\ugii_env.dat to have all your clients using the same configuration. Put this <location> on a share on a server, each seat would have this location mapped as a drive and one variable set to point to this location. Now you have complete control for all seats in your environment.

If you selected the option to not show this dialog next time when opening a JT file using iSeries, and now you want to see this dialog again so that you can change the options. Open iSeries File -> Preferences -> Interoperate; Toggle “Ask at load time”.

<W@$SH_SHEET_NUMBER> - Sheet number of the current sheet

<W@$SH_NUMBER_OF_SHEETS> - Number of sheets in the current part

<W@$SH_SHEET_SCALE_NUMERATOR> - Numerator of the sheet scale

<W@$SH_SHEET_SCALE_DENOMINATOR> - Denominator of the sheet scale

<W@$SH_SHEET_SIZE> - Size of the current sheet

<W@$SH_SHEET_UNITS> - Units of the current sheet

<W@$SH_SHEET_PROJECTION_ANGLE> - Projection angle symbol of the current sheet

<W@$SH_MASTER_PART_NAME> - Master Model drawing sheet part name

<W@$SH_PART_NAME> - Sheet part name

Starting in Teamcenter Engineering 2005 SR1 MP3, they have added a new format string. In the “IMAN_BASE_DIR\lang\textserver\en” is a file for time. Add the following key:
<key id=”NXDefaultDateFormat”>%d-%b-%Y</key>  

Restart your Teamcenter Service and open your drawings now it will have the DDMMYYYY format. If you want other formats there are other variables to get different results.

Customer defaults has a site standards section under assemblies section.

You need to define your naming convention using regular expressions. In your case you have 6 digit part number with an ‘underscore’ two digit number.

An example Regular expression for your site standards would be: (each line represents each section in the site standards)
([0-9]{6})(|_[0-9]{2})
\1
\1(|_[0-9]{2})
\2

Set the rule to numeric.

Another example would be:
([dD]?[0-9]{2}[a-zA-Z]?[0-9]{5,7})(|([a-zA-Z]{1,2}))

which would be for parts in this type of series:
1234567
12345678
123456789
d1234567
d12345678
d123456789

1234567_a
12345678_a
123456789_a
d1234567_a
d12345678_a
d123456789_a

Set your load options to load latest (now available since you set your site standards).

First I’d like to say, I’m not a fan of AutoCad. Second I’d like to say I’m a fan of AutoDesk draw for the web. http://draw.labs.autodesk.com/ This allows you to draw in 2D on any of the standard web browsers (IE, Firefox, others). With out any downloads, installs etc. You can take this offline if you have Google Gears installed, which is a platform for taking web applications offline. You can save the files on their servers or your own. No signup just start drawing. Check it out.

When you do a saveas from NX into Teamcenter Engineering, a Teamcenter variable comes into play. This is:

DATASET_saveas_pattern=${ItemID}/${RevisionID}

Which in Teamcenter 2005 (10) is stored in the database, found from Portal at: Edit -> Option… ->  Search (tab on bottom)

But what if your UGMASTER, UGPART, UGALTREP or other datasets have different naming conventions? Lets say you add a ‘Drawing’ text into the naming. The Save-As will fail. So to fix this you need to add DATASET specific saveas_pattern. This example is for UGPART datasets:

UGPART_saveas_pattern=${ItemID}-Drawing/${RevisionID}

Think of the DATASET_saveas_pattern as the global rules, and the specific dataset patterns as overrides.

 I noticed this in NX5, with the file new dialog has templates to choose from to base your part off of. By default there is a ‘blank’ file which will work as desired, but what if you had a set of english and metric files; Assembly, model, and analysis files. That is a lot of template files to be constantly updating. The interesting thing to note is when you create a new file based on one of these files, the settings that are part specific also go along for the ride. This is good and bad. If your drafting settings for example need to be tweaked, do you really want to change each and every one of these files? I don’t, so I’m glad to see NX has a setting in the customer defaults to override what is in the part.

In the customer defaults:
Drafting -> General -> Drawing -> Drawing settings -> use Settings from standard (option)

Enable debug in Portal:  set IMAN_SDL_MAGIC=42 in an environment variable

Sorry for the long delay, Too many projects going on. I want to cover NX5 and all that is great about it but haven’t had the opportunity yet. Hopefully in the coming weeks I’ll get some time to make regular posts again. I encourage feedback, if there is something of interest or want to hear about let me know, I’ll be more then happy to get an article out there.

Until next time,