NX9 Drawing Title Block setup Woes

[BOPdesigner]

Ok, so I have created tabular notes and positioned them so that they line up for a nice title block on my drafting template. Then I Define the title block to turn them into a title block. Next I find that I need to change the formatting on one of the cells. So I edit definition on the title block to remove that tabular note from the block. 1) After I fix it and add it back in to the block, the cell labels have all reverted back to labelx, instead of the descriptive prompts that I gave them. How do I make it retain those?
2) For a couple of the fields in the title block, I need to have a drop down selection list instead of free text entry. Is it possible?
3) Is it possible to have a cell be shared in two different title blocks. Example Drawing number cell from the title block on the first drawing sheet be linked to the corresponding cell in a simplified title block the continuation drawing sheet.

 

[Arkance/PhoeNX]

1. That's the way it is in NX9. I think NX10 is better in this regard but I haven't done testing as yet.
2. You can create an attribute with a drop down. The attribute needs to be created by using the attribute templates function.
3. If you create a part attribute, it can appear on multiple sheets.


Anthony Galante
Senior Support Engineer


NX3 to NX10 with almost every MR (21versions)

 

[BOPdesigner]

So I got the attribute (list) created. But how do you see and choose from the list in the title block definition? It appears that you have to go into the part properties to select the attribute. I need to see the dropdown in the title block definition when the user is populating the titleblock.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The Attribute Drop-down is only available from the File -> Properties -> Attributes dialog.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Hmm. Ok. So I like having the title block information as part attributes. But the Populate title block/double click on title block to bring up that title block dialog is much cleaner for entering the title block information than File->Properties->Attributes. So I don't suppose you can go the other day, that is to link the tabular note cells in the title block back to part attributes.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Not sure what you mean by "link the tabular note cells in the title block back to part attributes.". If you're asking whether entering a value into a title block field will update/create an attribute, the answer is NO. But if you mean can I select one of the drop-down choices for an attribute in the properties dialog and have a field in the title block update, the answer is YES.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Ok, yes I was hoping that I could access the attribute drop down list from the populate title block dialog. One stop for all my title block information, istead of having to use the populate title block dialog for some informmation and then the part attributes for other info. I could use the part attributes for everything but it is not as clean and easy to populate as the new title block functionality.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Many people are now looking at Drawings as being a 'deliverable', not an 'authoring' mechanism. Hence, the ideal situation would be where ALL of the data/text that would be included in a title block or on the face of a Drawing, would already exist prior to the 'generation' of the Drawing 'document' and therefore all that would be needed is an automated way to inherit this existing information. The capability to leverage that data already exists by linking title block cells and Drawing notation to attributes, which can also provide links to expressions. Granted, we have included the ability to have the system prompt the user, on the fly, for some or all of this data, but that was done so as to accommodate as elegantly as possible all situations, including those where the generation and/or extraction of this external data, has not yet been fully automated by or is under the control of some higher level data management system/process.

I hope this helps you in understanding why we've gone the route that we have and how we see where we think NX will be going in the future.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Thanks John, we are on the same page. We are starting down a path for MBD/MBE which will have all the information central to the master model with PMI views etc for output in some sort of TDP. So for those cases where we still need to deliver a drawing for something, is it possible to link the title block cells to attributes in the master model file instead of the drawing file? Or at list link attributes from the master to attributes in the drawing which are then refereced by the titleblock cells. I know that the internal attributes can be mapped this way W@$SH_MASTER_PART_NAME for example. Is it similar for linking to customer added attributes in the master model file?

 

[Arkance/PhoeNX]

To look to the model part attribute, the drawing attribute starts with DB_DWG_TEMPLATE_attribute_name_from_model, where attribute_name_from_model is the name of the attribute in your model file.
Example:
If you have an attribute in your model file called BOPDESIGNER, in you're drawing template create an attribute call DB_DWG_TEMPLATE_BOPDESIGNER.
Then when you intialise a new drawing using your template, the attribute value for BOPDESIGNER will populate the DB_DWG_TEMPLATE_BOPDESIGNER attribute in your new drawing.

https://vimeo.com/album/3065578/video/100179684

is a video about attributes for drawing I made and covers how this works.


Anthony Galante
Senior Support Engineer


NX3 to NX10 with almost every MR (21versions)

 

[BOPdesigner]

Thanks for the video, very informative. So I am linking directly to my model attributes from the drawing file by inserting a note and then picking relationship from object and selecting the model attribute. The string that gets returned is of the format <WRef1*0@Model_Attribute>. And I am able to use these strings directly in my title block cells and also over write them if I double click to populate the title block. My question is what is the significance of the WRef1*0 in the string. If I add multiple relationships in the same note the they will be subsequently labeled as Wref2*0, Wref3*0 etc. but then I can change the code to be WRef1*0 for everything and it still works. So rather than mapping a model attribute to a drawing attribute using DB_DWG_TEMPLATE I am bypassing the creation of drawing attributes. Is there any down side to this? We are moving to all the attributes being in the master model so I don't really see the need to create new attributes in the drawing file.

 

[BOPdesigner]

Yea so maybe that doesn't work that well. I can't get the fields to update when I insert a different master model in my drawing.