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Basic to Advanced Computer Aided Design Using NX 12 Modeling, Drafting, Assemblies, and Sheet Metal A Project Oriented Learning Manual By: Stephen M. Samuel, PE Adam Ericksen, Ph.D. 2 SAMPLE Introduction COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY DESIGN VISIONARIES, INC All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, and photographic including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN: 978-1-935951-12-4 Published by: Design Visionaries 7034 Calcaterra Drive San Jose, CA 95120 [email protected] www.designviz.com www.nxtutorials.com Phone: (408) 997-6323 Proudly Printed in the United States of America Published April 2018 3 Dedication We dedicate this work to those folks who fight the good fight in classrooms all over the world. Teachers quietly raise our level of civilization and are in many cases under appreciated for it. Teachers are heroes. 4 SAMPLE Introduction About the Authors Stephen M. Samuel PE, Founder and President of Design Visionaries, has over 25 years of experience developing and using high-end CAD tools and mentoring its users. During a ten-year career at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, he was responsible for implementing advanced CAD/CAM technology in a design/manufacturing environment. He has trained thousands of engineers in Unigraphics, written self-paced courses in UG Advanced Modeling and Best Practices, and performed design work for numerous Fortune 500 companies. Stephen is the author of distinctive publications on Nastran, UG/NX CAD, Solid Edge, SolidWorks, and Teamcenter Engineering PLM. Stephen holds several US patents and enjoys a life of creativity and intellectual challenge in the city of San Jose, CA. He happily shares his life with three amazing children, his wife and his 84- year-old powerhouse of a mother that lives in a home right next door. Adam Ericksen, Ph.D., is an Engineering Consultant and NX Trainer at Design Visionaries, with over ten years of teaching experience. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Southern California, where he taught mathematics to engineers and other science students. Adam has contributed to product designs spanning several industries since joining Design Visionaries, and served as an expert NX trainer for a variety of satisfied customers throughout the US. 5 Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following people for their tireless efforts. Without the contributions from each of you, this book would be a mere shadow of what it has become. Jennine Scott, Landon Ritchie, Linda Howlett Special thanks to Landon Ritchie for the cover design. What readers have to say about our previous books “Practical Unigraphics NX Modeling for Engineers was extremely effective and much better than [other] textbooks. I would highly recommend this book to other professors and students alike.” Fred Dyen, Director of St. Louis University’s Aviation Maintenance Institute (AMI) “The UG NX textbook is well organized. Its tutorial style of learning is easy for students to utilize. The practice exercises are essential. From my experience in teaching students to use UG software, I have found that this is the best textbook currently on the market for teaching UG NX.” Dr. Pat Spicer, Professor at Western Illinois University 6 SAMPLE Introduction Preface Dear reader, Thank you for purchasing Basic to Advanced Computer Aided Design Using NX 12, the latest offering in our series of CAD training text books. Design Visionaries is an engineering consulting firm that performs many design projects great and small, including industrial design, product design and engineering analysis. Our customers entrust us with a wide range of designs, including medical devices, aerospace components, heavy machinery, and consumer products. The methods outlined in this book go beyond an academic use of the software. They are tricks of the trade that come from thousands of hours of actual use of the software to design some of the most difficult products in the world. In addition, Design Visionaries offers world class on-site training which enables us to develop and evolve our training material to provide maximum benefit. Please enjoy this text, and we invite you to log on to our websites – www.designviz.com and nxtutorials.com, where you can download the part files pack that accompanies this book. There are also additional free materials, other advanced materials, products, and goodies. Thank you, Stephen Samuel Adam Ericksen April 2018 7 Simple Solids and Surfaces Once you have a sketch, or several sketches, there are four basic types of bodies that you can create from those sketches using solid modeling operations. • Extruded – an extruded body is obtained by sweeping an input section string along a vector, with specified start and end distance limits. The Extrude command creates this kind of body in NX. • Revolved – a body of revolution is obtained by sweeping an input section string around an axis, with specified start and end angle limits. The Revolve command creates bodies of revolution in NX. • Swept – a swept body is obtained by sweeping the input section string along a guide curve. The Sweep Along Guide command produces general swept bodies in NX. • Lofted – lofted bodies are obtained by specifying non-intersecting section strings (not necessarily the same shape!), which the lofted body must pass through. The Through Curves command produces general lofted bodies in NX. More sophisticated surfaces are built by combining multiple sections with multiple guides –these are called mesh surfaces in NX, and there are a variety of sweep and loft tools that produce them. In addition to these four basic types of bodies shown above, you can also build simple primitive shapes from scratch. The primitive design features in NX include Block, Cylinder, Cone, and Sphere. These commands are found in the More gallery in the Feature group on the Home tab. In the exercises below, we illustrate these fundamental tools, as well as a few others for creating simple solids and surfaces. Extrude The Extrude command is fundamental to solid modeling. The Extrude function takes a set of curves (called the section string) and sweeps them along a vector to create a solid or sheet body. If your section string is closed, the result will be a 8 SAMPLE Introduction solid body, and if the section string is open, the result will be a sheet body. The Extrude command is found in the Feature group on the Home tab. While most extrusions involve a planar section string (or at least curves from parallel planes), it is possible for the curves in the string to be twisted in three-dimensional space, although you must take care to ensure that the resulting body will not have self-intersections. • Create a new file called “Extrude.prt” and place it in “C:\My NX Files”. • Select the Extrude tool. The Extrude dialog box will then appear. The red asterisk in the Section field indicates that NX wants you to specify a curve. Since the Sketch Section icon is present, if you click on the XY plane of the datum coordinate system, you will enter the Sketch Task Environment on that plane. The Direction will automatically become a normal vector to the sketch plane, as well. Go ahead and select the XY plane. • In the Sketch Task Environment, create the sketch shown below. Finish the sketch to return to the Extrude dialog. • When the selection is a closed string, the preview shows a solid body defined by Start and End Limit values. You can modify these values in the Extrude dialog and the preview will update when you push [Tab] or [Enter]. 9 • You can also use the handles to dynamically modify your extruded body – the arrow controls the End, and the spherical handle controls the Start. Simply click-and-hold-and-drag either handle to change the value dynamically. • There are no restrictions on the relation between the Start and End values – NX doesn’t care if you use negative values, or whether the End value is greater than the Start value, or if they are the same – go wild! • There are some additional options within the Extrude dialog that are very useful. For instance, you can apply a Draft angle to the walls of the extruded body. When you specify a Draft, the draw direction is necessarily the same as the extrusion direction, and so whether the Start Limit Value is greater than the End Limit Value or not will impact how the Angle parameter is interpreted. Use the Reverse Direction button to Extrude in the -ZC direction, then set the Start to 0 in and the End to 1.5 in and specify a Draft Angle of 5 degrees. 10 SAMPLE Introduction • Click OK to create the Extrude feature. Since the sketch was created internally to the feature, it appears in neither the Model History, nor the Graphics Window. • Save your part file! Revolve The Revolve tool creates a body of revolution from a section string, which is not required to be closed. The axis of revolution can be a curve, edge, existing axis, or you can specify it by giving a direction vector and a point entity. • Create a new file called “Revolve.prt” and place it in “C:\My NX Files”. • Create the sketch shown below on the YZ plane of the datum coordinate system.