We’ll be talking about new features in Molded Part Design today, such as the Surface Identifier function. Your input helps us develop new features that will keep your processes competitive and ahead of the game. Let’s examine this more closely.
Molded component Design, which offers molded component design recommendations based on regulations and experience, was included in the June 2023 version of NX with the goal of lowering the cost of design cycles. The new product also featured feature validation for individual molded parts or moldability validation.
In this procedure, we’ll examine a speaker’s plastic enclosure and enhance its overall design by adding new features and functionalities.
Let’s examine the Housing feature, the first of the newly included elements in Molded Part Design. Generally speaking, you should utilize the Housing feature to find bosses or comparable things much more quickly than in the past. We’ll walk you through the best way to utilize the speaker cover’s Housing function. Choosing the places on the portion where you want the housing feature to be applied, choosing the direction in which you want the housing to be orientated, and then applying the command is a pretty simple procedure.
For the speaker to function properly, there must be enough cooling, just like in any device with an internal PCB system. Because of this, Molded Part Design has the capability to design slot vents that enhance airflow around the component and eventually maximize cooling. Additionally, the function is new and was created with maximum flexibility in mind. Changes to the vent’s width, number of slots, and size can be modified after its position has been determined.
Although they were introduced in the June 2023 version of Molded Part Design, snap joints will be useful to illustrate for this particular use case. Snap joints will be used to join the top and bottom covers. This is accomplished by creating a groove on the upper portion of the cover, which facilitates simpler alignment of the two sections.
Now let’s talk about another new improvement we made to this NX release. Molded Part Design’s first version had mounting bosses as well, but we’ve added the capability to choose many points at once when issuing a command. You will be able to optimize your workflow efficiency and save time by creating both bosses at the same time.
You’ll note that your model’s interior casing will have the Mounting Bosses put to it when you’ve chosen and applied them from the command. This is completed automatically and in a far less amount of time than before.
Introducing so many new features to Molded Part Design is amazing, and here’s just another one. We are pleased to present the Surface Identifier function, a tool that will greatly simplify the process of prioritizing and organizing the surfaces in your assembly. Let’s examine this.
We must ensure that the speaker cover we are making has the best finish possible because it will be a component of a product that people will eventually utilize. Keeping this in mind, take note of the way we’ve chosen every face on the front of the case and given them a Class A designation to preserve their significance.
You could choose to organize your surfaces into different categories using the three creative labels that come with the package. Is it possible that certain faces are more significant than others, in which case you should rank your faces in order of importance? Then, to provide visual clarity, you may use our Class A, Class B, and Class C labels or create your own, rename them, and add a complementary hue.
Though we have introduced additional features that we will go over in more depth, feature validation is not a brand-new tool for Molded Part Design. We’ll concentrate on the Housing feature and if the mounting bosses will adhere to legal requirements. The molded component navigator will include several validations, such as color coding and visual tags, when the Feature Validation tool has completed a test. It’s crucial to keep in mind that although some of these are recommendations, others are failures that require correction.
If you look more closely at our validation result, you will see that one of our mounting bosses has to be corrected since it is lacking a radius. This boss’s edge blend at the top will take care of the problem. We can also determine whether other edges need to be blended—which in this case is necessary for one of the other edge blends—by using the Select Predicted Objects function.
This is where the tool we built comes in handy; you can now do a local update for your assembly. In this instance, we may re-run the validation while concentrating only on the two bosses to whom we have applied edge blends, as opposed to re-evaluating each feature that has been introduced.
One boss has a green checkmark, but the other still has a warning, as you can see. It’s crucial to keep in mind that this is only an advice and doesn’t require immediate action just yet.
That concludes our most recent Tips and Tricks segment for NX’s December 2023 release. We want to maintain our content delivery schedule as 2024 progresses. We’ll look at applying surface treatments to your components in our upcoming episode. Check out some of the interesting things we’ve lately released in the meantime.
