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Sometimes during the import of an assembly to TC, there are some external
referenced files that are not physically in the assembly but could cause
problems on import. You can usually find out about these references after
adding an assembly to import, then go to --> Numbering tab --> Exceptions. The
references would be listed as: "file name" (Default)(Name Only).
How do you get rid of these references?
Solution
One way that you can remove these dead external references before import is to
open the assembly fully, (Partial Load toggled off from Assembly Load Options),
then --> Information --> Part --> Loaded Parts and you can see the referenced
parts listed at the bottom as:
"file name.prt" "file name" Not Loaded.
If they are really dead references, then you can do Part Cleanup turning all
switches except the serious delete action. Now try Information --> Part ->
Loaded Parts again and the referenced parts should be gone.
Note that while these part cleanup tools are very useful, they do not cover all
possible data scenarios or all possible application specific constructs. For
example, unresolved inter-part references are not identified and cleaned. And
one reason for not doing this is that tools should not remove information the
user may potentially want to use at some later point in time. For example, the
user will not be able to delete component array references if the master array
has not been deleted, since some users might want the ability to re-associate
to references later. Therefore, to really delete the unwanted reference, the
user would need to manually go to the Edit Component Arrays dialog ( Assemblies
--> Component --> Edit Component Array) and then delete the arrays that are no
longer valid (or unsuppress them and pick delete).
What causes these external references to show up in the assembly?
NX has the ability to create interpart references in many different ways
throughout an assembly. They can be done using Part Families, WAVE links,
Interpart expressions, Promotions and Positioning Constraints to mention a few.
When parts are not managed by a robust PDM system like Teamcenter it is very
easy to delete a (place holder) part not knowing that it is used by an
assembly, or by another part. This is the most common reason for cases
of dead references. Other known issues are users renaming parts on the OS;
the name seen by the user looks correct after the rename, however, any part
referencing the renamed part is in fact referencing its internal name,
which was not renamed.
In this scenario ug_clone could potentially now be looking for two references
of the same part - of course when searching the OS you'll never find the
original part because it was renamed.
As for avoiding these issues in the future, Teamcenter will help tremendously
by preventing users from deleting referenced parts.
It should also be noted that the Teamcenter import utility does allow the
importing of assemblies that contain references to data that are not contained
in the assembly. These are treated as "Name Only" references and thus do not
require the importing of the missing referenced data. Also, customers that
need customer-specific cleanup capability have the option to write their own JA
or NX/Open type automation utility.
Notes and References
Hardware/Software Configuration
Platform: all
OS: n/a
OS Version: n/a
Product: NX
Application: NXMANAGER
Version: V12.0.2
Function: CLONE_IMPORT
Ref: 001-7275272