NX | Tips and Tricks | Cut, Copy & Paste Constraints within Assemblies

By smithjustin

Welcome to another Tips & Tricks blog. Today we take a closer look at cut, copy, and paste within Assemblies. In this video, we show how you can save time with enhancements made to assemblies in the latest release of NX™ software. NX Assemblies is a powerful tool for creating the digital twin of your product and allowing users to combine individual components into a larger structures to simulate the interaction of multiple parts within an assembly.

Check out the latest Tips & Tricks video below to learn more about NX Assemblies:

What have we added?

NX will now retain constraints when users restructure components within assemblies. When components are copy and pasted, NX will include associative constraints either within the assembly or across different assemblies. NX will also automatically update external constraints to reflect a new position within the assembly or provide an automated way to resolve the constraints

Constraining Parts for Copy and Paste

Before we can cut and paste constraints, we need to start be creating a simple assembly of a gearbox. This assembly will use two gears of the same size for a one-to-one gear ratio. By using a hinge joint and selecting a vector and point we can quickly constrain a gear to the housing.

Once the gear is copy and pasted back into the assembly, an unresolved hinge joint is shown in the resolve constraints list. Once resolving these constraints all that’s let is to create a gear joint coupler and adjust the angle offset. All the constraints are resolved and the assembly rotates freely.

Copying and Pasting an Assembly

We can highlight and copy the gearbox assembly to paste into a separate file. Once the gear housing is fixed into position the hinge joints and the gear joint couplers are preserved automatically.

Copying shared components over to a new assembly is seamless. We can copy the gears to another gearbox assembly with the constraints intact. We will need to resolve the hinge constraints to account for the new coupler and adjust the offset. The gear joint coupler constraint remains internal to the gear assembly, we need to adjust the angle offset for the gears. The gears now move in the same manner as before.

Preserving constraints is not only possible between files but also when restructuring assemblies. When we move the input transfer gear to the top level of the APU assembly the constraints are automatically maintained. Their is no longer prompts to resolve the external constraints as the constraints are resolved when the assembly was restructured.