NX7.5 Class-A Intro: Megaphone

Building on what we’ve learned so far in our NX intro series, today we’ll build perfect class-a surfaces for a simple megaphone handle. See full post for part 2.

Transcript:

Good evening cadjunkies, this is Adam, industrial designer for cadjunkie.com. I?m recording from my mobile workstation today, as I?m hailing from a cloudy and lightly-snowing Seattle Washington this fine evening spending some time with my good friends over at Carbon Design.

Let?s take a look at the real power of parametric class-a surfacing in action, using what we?ve learned so far about curves and section surfaces in NX.

First, we need to introduce a new type of associative entity in NX: the ?Sketch.? So far we?ve been working with stand-along curve items that exist in the history tree all on their own. These have their own advantages, and I use them frequently, but Sketches will open up whole new worlds of possibilities for us.

Think of a ?Sketch? as a group of related 2D geometry on a single plane, packed neatly into a single item in the history tree. To create a sketch item, use menu bar > insert > Sketch, or toolbar manager > direct sketch > sketch. NX will now ask us for a little info about the sketch we?re trying to create: most importantly, it wants us to select a plane on which to work. Choose a plane, and click ?OK.?

Once the sketch has been created, we can begin to draw geometry. Use the tools in the toolbar manager > direct sketch toolbar, or menu bar > insert > sketch curve.

In sketcher we can create geometry quickly and easily, without having to create separate features for each. We?ll take a detailed look at the Sketcher in a future tutorial, but for now, suffice it to say that the Sketcher is your friend!
Once we?ve drawn a few sketch items, you can exit the sketch by clicking the checkered flag at the top-right of the window, by right-clicking in the viewport and selecting ?Finish Sketch,? or by hitting [ctrl]+[q] on the keyboard.
Notice that despite having drawn several items, we only see one ?sketch? item in the history tree. To edit the sketch, double-click it, or right-click > edit.

When we created studio splines using menu bar > insert > studio spline, we were able to create an independent spline-item in our history tree. However, if we choose menu bar > insert > sketch curves > studio spline (or hitting [S] on the keyboard), select a plane, and draw a spline, we are able to quickly create a sketch element containing a studio spline curve. This may seem like a nit-picky difference, but it?s actually very important, for reasons we?ll discuss later.

So from now on, we can create a new studio spline simply by hitting the [S] key on the keyboard, which will allow us to create sketch-based splines on the fly.

Now, let?s put it all together and see what we can do.

[modeling exercise]