C) Upcoming Events and Training Class Schedules

Live Webcast: Design News and PTC!
 

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AAX expands the power of Pro/E Foundation to encompass the engineering and management of medium to very large assemblies. It offers high powered tools for design criteria management, top-down assembly design, large assembly management, Shrinkwrap, and process planning. These tools enhance the productivity of design teams creating and managing very large, complex product designs – and help downstream users produce accurate lifecycle documentation and assemble these complex products on the shop floor.

When do you use AAX?
*When your assembly or part designs become too large to regenerate in a timely manner.
*If you want to employ Top Down Design procedures.
*If you want to use skeleton models.
*If you need to create assembly documentation that includes multiple explode states and multiple BOM representations.
*If you want to communicate proprietary designs with outside suppliers, in a secure manner.

Key Product Features and capabilities:

Advanced Assembly Design
*Top Down Design: use skeleton models to define and drive top level assembly design criteria.
*Interchange Assemblies: Allows users to relate independent but functionally equivalent parts, so these can be easily switched in the context of a particular design.
*Simplified Representations: Collect specified components for better graphical display performance based on rules such as: model size, location, name, or any other parameter.
*Associative Shrinkwrap: Creates a lightweight surface representation that includes mass properties.  This greatly improves system performance and allows you to send suppliers accurate and associative models without revealing the proprietary design information.

Process Planning
*A complete assembly process documentation tool.  Create complete (and accurate) assembly documentation for the shop floor.
*Depict only the components present in a given assembly step.
*Automatic BOM's that only reflect the components assembled up to a particular step.
*Create multiple exploded views with jogged offset assembly lines.

Design Criteria Management
*2d Graphical Layouts: Create conceptual stage drawings that include information such as: global parameters, relationships, constraints, and requirements.
*Automatic assembly: Users can create a placement correspondence among multiple components in the assembly by declaring the same axis or plane in different components in the assembly to the layout. The software then can locate components with common declarations based on this knowledge - to automatically combine them in an assembly.

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B) Tip of the week: Surface Transforms

Have you ever wanted to pattern complex geometry but couldn't because of the references you picked?
Do you have a model that has a long regeneration time because of a large pattern?
If you answered yes to either one of those questions, Surface Transforms could be the answer for you!

Definitions (in Pro/E terms):
*What is a surface quilt?
A surface quilt is a "patchwork" of connected surfaces. A quilt may contain one or more surface patches.  The external edges of a surface are yellow, and the internal boundaries of the patches are displayed in magenta.
*What is a transform?
A transform feature enables surface quilts and/or datum curves to be translated, rotated, or mirrored.  This functionality is accessed through Feature, Create, Surface, Transform.
*What is a "tweak patch"?
A tweak patch allows one or more solid surfaces to be replaced with a surface feature.  Tweak patch features can both add and remove solid material at the same time. This functionality is accessed through Feature, Create, Tweak, Patch.

Benefits of using Surface Transform:
1) Fast regen times:
*It only copies the final geometry making it extremely efficient for regen times.
*Does not have to re-specify references to parents.
2) Complex geometry manipulations:
*Dimensioning methodology does not constrain the type of pattern or copy you use.
*Similar to an Identical pattern as all of the geometry is the same.

An example: Radial pattern of a feature with no embedded angular dimensions.
 

1) This is an example of geometry that could not be patterned because there is no angular dimension.

2) Create a surface copy of existing geometry (include the small hole in the center).

3) Transform the surface about a radius a specified angle (results shown here)

4) Fill the transformed surface with solid material using "tweak patch"

5) Pattern the transformed surface.

6) Ref pattern the "tweak patch" feature.  The resulting geometry looks like this!

Summary: (Go here for the complete description of technique)
*We are able to pattern geometry that would have been impossible with standard pattern tools.
*The end model will regenerate faster because the resulting geometry is patterned (not all the individual features that make it up).
*The surface features we patterned are essentially "consumed" by performing the tweak patch.
*This works for both protrusions (where material is added) and cuts (where material is removed).
*This technique can be used in virtually any circumstance where complex geometry needs to be patterned or copied!