Thread: nx tutorials

Howdy. Managed to get an edu version of nx thanks to the wife. Are there any good tutorials or books for it. I do a lot of solidworks and the community is great but there does not seem to be as much about nx. I would like to take this thing 9n a test-drive to see if it's worth it to buy it. Thank you.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

Howdy. Managed to get an edu version of nx thanks to the wife. Are there any good tutorials or books for it. I do a lot of solidworks and the community is great but there does not seem to be as much about nx. I would like to take this thing 9n a test-drive to see if it's worth it to buy it. Thank you.

I think Rob Lockwood said it best a while ago; handing someone a seat of NX without any guidance is like putting some raondo in the seat of an F22 Raptor.

The CAD side is easy enough to pick up if you are already familiar with 3D parametric jazz. The learning resources for NX CAD are readily available (lots of books, lots of YouTube videos). The most readily available quick overview of NX is on Lynda.com from Steven Marjeh, you can use the free trial and burn through his tutorials in an evening. Most of the VAR YouTube channels I'll list below have more nitty-gritty CAD side examples and tutorials.

The CAM side is another story. NX is a crazy configurable piece of CAM software, and everyone has their own kinda way of doing things. Some folks are all about the simultaneous 5 axis capabilities, others are deep in the Feature Based Machining, others use NX because it can be configured to program just about any kind of machine motion. It is very overkill for basic 3 axis work. That makes teaching it sort of difficult, as the user base and their needs are highly distributed.

Your best bet is to burn through this Turkish gentlemen's YouTube videos:

YouTube

He goes through basic setup of a part, and literally every operation in a step-by-step fashion.

Often watching more advanced level videos will clue you into how to do more basic stuff. For that NC Matic is worth going over. The topics might be above your head till you get the NX lingo and workflow, but they are generally pretty great:

YouTube

NX VARs also put out some pretty great video content. None of them are workflow overviews that give you the big picture, but you can stitch together what you see to get an idea of how to make NX work for you.

Acuity: YouTube

AppliedCAx: YouTube

ProLim: YouTube

Awesome. Thank you. Primarily my nx interest lies with modeling. I need it to do a specific thing that I hope it will be able to do. I am not sure the edu version has cam and I am pretty set on what I use already.

+1 for Steven Marjeh on Lynda.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

Awesome. Thank you. Primarily my nx interest lies with modeling. I need it to do a specific thing that I hope it will be able to do. I am not sure the edu version has cam and I am pretty set on what I use already.

And what's that specific thing that SW can't do?

It can. But not well. Basically I have a library assembly that needs to vary in size. Based on the size of that assembly a variety of parts need to adjust to it including weldment profiles. At the moment when I make a new assembly using the library assembly it's not as fast as I want it to be nor as clean on the bom. Right now it's a lot of things not updating sometimes and funky behaviors. Id like it to be a little more stable. The thing in question is basically a metal frame with wood components. Oh also nesting of wood components would be great but that's another issue

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

It can. But not well. Basically I have a library assembly that needs to vary in size. Based on the size of that assembly a variety of parts need to adjust to it including weldment profiles. At the moment when I make a new assembly using the library assembly it's not as fast as I want it to be nor as clean on the bom.

Sounds parametric to me Also look at Pro/E perhaps ?

Originally Posted by EmanuelGoldstein

Sounds parametric to me Also look at Pro/E perhaps ?

Tried that it does not handle library assemblies like I would like. Also the mouse rotation drives me nuts. I tried solid edge too.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

...Also the mouse rotation drives me nuts...

You might want to take a look at these. One you have it you will never use CAD/CAM/CAE without it again.
3Dconnexion: SpaceMouse

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

It can. But not well. Basically I have a library assembly that needs to vary in size. Based on the size of that assembly a variety of parts need to adjust to it including weldment profiles. At the moment when I make a new assembly using the library assembly it's not as fast as I want it to be nor as clean on the bom. Right now it's a lot of things not updating sometimes and funky behaviors. Id like it to be a little more stable. The thing in question is basically a metal frame with wood components. Oh also nesting of wood components would be great but that's another issue

If you are looking to automate some mundane or repetitive tasks, NX supports all sorts of expressions including conditional as well as you can write custom C and VB to interact with almost everything. You can easily create Journals graphically using the UI and then tweak them as you see fit. They are using VB so customizing them to do more elaborate tasks is a breeze. You can link expressions to a spreadsheet for bi-directional manipulation too and also drafting attributes as well. There is much more too, I'm just past "scratching the surface" lol.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

It can. But not well. Basically I have a library assembly that needs to vary in size. Based on the size of that assembly a variety of parts need to adjust to it including weldment profiles. At the moment when I make a new assembly using the library assembly it's not as fast as I want it to be nor as clean on the bom. Right now it's a lot of things not updating sometimes and funky behaviors. Id like it to be a little more stable. The thing in question is basically a metal frame with wood components. Oh also nesting of wood components would be great but that's another issue

Are you using configurations in the assembly?
are you breaking the link to the library assembly after making the new assembly?
is the frame a weldment part?

yep nesting, solid nesting, would be nice! All I have found out there is 2D nesting for any CAD programs.

I tried assembly configurations but it's not happy. The frame is a weldment. The configurations are not as important in this case as I can just suppress elements. It's this. Modularadaptive.com what's critical is for the size to change easily. I will see how nx goes.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

Tried that it does not handle library assemblies like I would like. Also the mouse rotation drives me nuts.

Can fix the mouse thing for you easy, get a spaceball. You'll never go back to mousing in 3d. I luvs my spacer !

Not sure it doesn't handle library assemblies well. Have you run through a sample problem with a real Pro/E guy ? One who knows his shit ? There's usually an easy way and a hard way to do stuff in the /E. The parametric thing is really their bag, should be especially suitable for what you describe.

p.s. Oops, I see Qwan beat me to it on the mouse. That's makes two for the spaceball / mouse. Really useful devices.

Originally Posted by EmanuelGoldstein

Can fix the mouse thing for you easy, get a spaceball. You'll never go back to mousing in 3d. I luvs my spacer !

Not sure it doesn't handle library assemblies well. Have you run through a sample problem with a real Pro/E guy ? One who knows his shit ? There's usually an easy way and a hard way to do stuff in the /E. The parametric thing is really their bag, should be especially suitable for what you describe.

p.s. Oops, I see Qwan beat me to it on the mouse. That's makes two for the spaceball / mouse. Really useful devices.

Hello. Not a big fan of the space mouse. Had 2 on 2 different computers never enjoyed it. I'll look more into pro e but also if life gives you nx you make a factory that bottles lemonade.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

Hello. Not a big fan of the space mouse. Had 2 on 2 different computers never enjoyed it. I'll look more into pro e but also if life gives you nx you make a factory that bottles lemonade.

I despised the Space Mouse for *years*. Until I became an NX user. It took about a week of forcing myself to use it and breaking previous habits. Now? I literally won't use CAD without it. Even bought the wireless one and drag it to client locations.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

I tried assembly configurations but it's not happy. The frame is a weldment. The configurations are not as important in this case as I can just suppress elements. It's this. Modularadaptive.com what's critical is for the size to change easily. I will see how nx goes.

First, NICE Stuff of your site!

Have you contacted your VAR on the issues?

I worked for a VAR 16 years ago, we would have some customers in the furniture industry wanting to do what you are asking. Been gone to long and not doing any of those things, just machining student projects now.

so we did a video of using design tables to help drive the assemblies via hide\show, suppress\unsuppress, equations\formulas all in an excel sheet.

also showed how to use on a website to configure the products.

maybe the library assembly isn't the way to control size???? since other CAD has given you the same hiccups as SW?????

Originally Posted by len_1962

First, NICE Stuff of your site!

Have you contacted your VAR on the issues?

I worked for a VAR 16 years ago, we would have some customers in the furniture industry wanting to do what you are asking. Been gone to long and not doing any of those things, just machining student projects now.

so we did a video of using design tables to help drive the assemblies via hide\show, suppress\unsuppress, equations\formulas all in an excel sheet.

also showed how to use on a website to configure the products.

maybe the library assembly isn't the way to control size???? since other CAD has given you the same hiccups as SW?????

I would like a library as I can drag and drop. I also wanted to stay with virtual components to not create many new and similar parts. Right now I insert make independent have it run of the main assembly variables copy paste supress and so on. As far as the var goes, not really. There is a dedicated software out of australia for this that nests the weldments and the wood and allows you to move things around on the sheet but its 20k. This right now is a hold over point untill I can justify the purchase of that. The nx thing is fun to mess with and maybe if it does what I want it to do I can go that way as it can run the rest of the business as well.

Originally Posted by plutoniumsalmon

I would like a library as I can drag and drop. I also wanted to stay with virtual components to not create many new and similar parts. Right now I insert make independent have it run of the main assembly variables copy paste supress and so on. As far as the var goes, not really. There is a dedicated software out of australia for this that nests the weldments and the wood and allows you to move things around on the sheet but its 20k. This right now is a hold over point untill I can justify the purchase of that. The nx thing is fun to mess with and maybe if it does what I want it to do I can go that way as it can run the rest of the business as well.

Was just at the SW2020 Rollout they showed that they can do what you are asking (as well as I understand what you want), might want to check out in your area.

couldn't hurt.