Designcenter NX | Tips and Tricks | Structure Designer

By Alex Discher

In our latest Designcenter™ NX™ software Tips and Tricks video, we explore how Designcenter NX Structure Designer empowers you to rapidly create, modify, and document complex frame structures. This set of commands makes it incredibly easy to go from scan data to a fully detailed manufacturing drawing, dramatically speeding up your productivity for applications like creating inspection platforms for battery assemblies.

Check out the video below or scroll down to learn more about how to leverage Designcenter NX Structure Designer to make fast, flexible design changes and generate comprehensive manufacturing information.

From Scan Data to Foundation: Establishing Your 3D Sketch

Designing new structures often involves integrating with existing layouts or legacy components. For instance, recreating a platform for a battery assembly based on scan data, which will support automated inspection processes, requires efficiently converting this scan data into a precise, manufacturable frame structure.

Designcenter NX Structure Designer simplifies this process. After converting scan data into convergent bodies using polygon modeling techniques, users can activate the Structure Designer and begin a new structure. The Frame 3D command, particularly the Basic Structure option, enables for the quick generation of a foundational 3D sketch. Users can then create duplicate 3D sketch curves that conform to their design intent.

Using the Create Dimension option, precise control over the distances between each frame structure is achieved, much like standard sketching. This flexibility extends to creating other types of sketch curves by manipulating control points, distances, and angles, ensuring the 3D sketch accurately reflects design objectives. All 3D sketch results are conveniently organized and viewable in the Structure Designer navigator tab under the construction curve folder. This enables users to Quickly establish the foundational geometry for your frame, even from complex scan data, ensuring accuracy and design intent from the outset.

Figure 1: Initial 3D sketch curves with dimensions, forming the foundational frame geometry

Intelligent Member Creation: Populating Your Frame with Precision

Once the 3D sketch is established, the next step is to populate it with structural members. Manually adding and ensuring proper trimming for each member can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. Structure Designer streamlines this with its intelligent member creation capabilities rapidly populates your frame with standard profiles, ensuring manufacturing readiness with intelligent, automatically generated trims and flexible manual adjustments.

The Member option provides a rich library of out-of-the-box frame options, including L-Angle, C-channel, flat bar, I-beam, round, rectangular, square tubes, and T-bar. This enables users to easily select appropriate profiles, such as rectangular tubes and I-beams for a top frame, and square tubes for vertical supports, ensuring consistent tube widths for ease of assembly and welding.

A key advantage is that Designcenter NX automatically generates these frames with proper edge trims, anticipating manufacturing outcomes. However, if some edges aren’t perfectly trimmed, the Corner command enables users to select a joint node and choose from various trim options in the corner definition display window. This ensures all connections are clean and manufacturable.

Figure 2: Selecting member profiles from Structure Designer library’s options.

Figure 3: Defining member properties and observing the resulting frame structure within the Designcenter NX interface.

Integrating Components: Adding Support Pads and Features

Beyond the core frame, structural designs often require additional components like mounting pads. For instance, adding rectangular pads to the base of a frame provides space for welding and secure mounting to the floor.

Structure Designer simplifies this process, enabling users to easily integrate and size critical mounting features. This ensures proper weld access and secure installation, which in turn simplifies manufacturing and assembly processes. Users can also easily add these pads and adjust their width and length to provide ample space for both the welding process and the final installation.

Figure 4: Frame with rectangular pads added at the base for secure mounting and welding

Streamlining Documentation: Validation, Consolidation, and 2D Drawings

After creating the frame members and ensuring they are properly trimmed, a crucial step is to validate the design against the original scan data. Designcenter NX enables for a visual review, comparing the newly created frame members with the scan data (which can be kept on a separate layer). This ensures the design accurately matches the legacy information.

Once satisfied with the visual match, Structure Designer accelerates the generation of manufacturing information. When frames are created, each is automatically assigned a unique file name. However, many frames might be identical in size but located in different positions. The Consolidated Structure option intelligently identifies these duplicates, creating a proper assembly bill of material (BOM) that reflects the true count of unique parts. This automated process prevents redundant entries and optimizes your BOM.

Finally, generating 2D drawings is a breeze. Whether users prefer a traditional master model approach or creating drawings directly within the assembly part file (an acceptable practice for this instance), the Drawing command within Structure Designer automates the process. After selecting the desired 2D drawing size, Structure Designer automatically generates 2D drawing sheets for each component with proper views. Users can then quickly add a parts list and display ID balloons to the first sheet, along with an isometric view, making manufacturing documentation complete and professional.

Figure 5: Automatically generated 2D drawing with added parts list and ID balloons for manufacturing documentation.

Summary of Designcenter NX Structure Designer

Designcenter NX Structure Designer offers a comprehensive and highly efficient approach to structural design. It provides tools for quickly generating 3D sketches based on scan data, intelligently creating and trimming frame members, and automating the generation of consolidated bills of material and detailed 2D drawings, covering the entire workflow.

This powerful tool ensures that users can quickly create 3D sketches, add proper frames to match legacy data, and then generate all necessary manufacturing information in the context of 2D drawings, all while properly consolidating the bill of material. Whether designing complex platforms for automated processes or any other frame structure, Designcenter NX Structure Designer ensures that your workflow remains efficient, flexible, and fully in your control.