Simcenter 3D Solutions CAE Templates not showing, when working with Teamcenter Integration for NX/Simcenter 3D

When working in NX/Simcenter 3D together with Teamcenter (Teamcenter Integration for NX (TCIN) / NX Manager), it could be that under “File”--> “New Item” the simulation tab with the CAE templates does not appear. Or certain templates are missing. There can be a lot of causes for this, but this article will describe the most common ones that might cause this.

A related issue, is that the Stress Wizard will fail with the message:

There are several known causes and I will try to explain the options you can try and check to solve all related issues.

Note: Because the solutions of Simcenter are the same as for NX, I will use NX in this document, but the same issues, can be solved in the same way for Simcenter 3D.

Note: I’m using NX 2312 here as an example in most cases, but options given here are the same or very similar for other versions of NX.

First of all, the most obvious solution, is to check which solvers are active in the preferences.

Menu --> Preferences --> Solver preferences.

Make sure either “all” or the needed solvers are selected:

First of all, start with the most basic one. When going for “File” à “New Item”, NX will look for the pax files, under which nxdm_ugs_cae_templates.pax, which can be found by default in the folder “C:\Program Files\Siemens\NX 11.0\SIMULATION\templates”. Have look in your NX syslog, and see if this is listed, and what it is looking for:

Secondly, make sure the template files specified in the pax file, are available in Teamcenter. So they must exist with the right name and revision, otherwise they can’t be found and will not be loaded. If none of the template files is available in Teamcenter, the Simulation Tab will not show up at all. If it can’t be found, it will show up in the NX syslog, and will tell you what it is looking for.

After you are sure that the template files are available, there are still reasons why NX won’t show these templates.

One of those reasons is that there is a known bug in NX 11.0.0, reported in PR 7777624. Where the Stress Wizard does not start as it is looking for the wrong License which is actually not required. This issue is solved in NX 11.0.1.

Another reason for the templates not to appear is the TC Preference:

TC_part_types_display_filter

The listed types in this preference are the Item Types that are not visible in NX under the “blank templates”. Where in NX 8.0, this preference had no influence on any Sub ItemTypes, this behavior was enhanced in NX 10.0, so it would be honored also by the blank template ItemTypes. Side effect is that both the blank template and the template files do no longer appear if not configured correctly.

This is how to recognize the issue in the NX syslog file, you will find a similar entry:

 <ItemType> value: 'CAEItem', fails to be subtype of expected base value: 'Item' for template: Template Name NX Nastran, Filename %UGMGR=V3.2 PH=BcAAAABcYFdksC PRH=BZKAAABcYFdksC PN=FemNxNastranEnglish PRN=A RT=NX_simulation AT="CAE mesh part file", application type CaeFemTemplate. Template ignored.
Skipped unsupported item type CAEItem during pax file processing.

In order to solve this, in Teamcenter --> Edit --> Options, and search for the preference TC_part_types_display_filter and remove the type you do not want to filter. Filter means, the item types listed are NOT shown.

Or in more recent versions of NX, it might show:

Processing N:\SIMULATION\templates\nxdm_ugs_cae_templates.pax for File New Templates
Skipped hidden item type CAEItem during pax file processing.

                <ItemType> value: 'CAEItem', either invalid or hidden type or fails to be subtype of expected base value: 'Item' for template: Template Name Simcenter Nastran, Filename %UGMGR=V3.2 PH=wLNAAAACJqR2sD PRH=w3PAAAACJqR2sD PN=FemNxNastranEnglish PRN=A RT=NX_simulation AT="CAE mesh part file" , application type CaeFemTemplate. Template ignored.
Skipped hidden item type CAEItem during pax file processing.

In order to solve this, in Teamcenter à Edit à Options, and search for the preference TC_part_types_display_filter.

By default this preference does not exist, and if so, all item types should be visible and you can skip this section. If it does exist, NX will only show the Item types specified in here. Any missing Item types should be added, and make sure also the parent item types are included as well. So besides the CAEModel, CAEGeometry, CAEAnalysis and the NX0CAEMotionSim it should also contain the Item and CAEItem as well. It should look something like this.

While we are in the Teamcenter Preferences. If you are using TeamCenter Rapidstart, or did use it in the past, you get some extra default settings. One of them is:

Hide_Types_for_Create

This preference does what it says, hiding certain ItemTypes for creation. After removing all entries starting with CAE*... The templates should be available again in NX.

Yet another TC preference to check is, TYPE_DISPLAY_RULES_list_types_of_subclasses:

If in the syslog file, the following lines are recorded...

         +++ CAEAnalysis/Subtypes not installed on Teamcenter server

         +++ CAEModel/Subtypes not installed on Teamcenter server

         +++ CAEGeometry/Subtypes not installed on Teamcenter server 

Check the Tc Preference for "TYPE_DISPLAY_RULES_list_types_of_subclasses" if the options have the CAE subclasses listed as;

CAEItem
CAEAnalysis
CAEModel
CAEGeometry

And for the more recent version of NX/TC

            NX0CAEMotionSim

Another possible reason for the template files not appearing in NX could be due to a setting in the BMIDE.

The problem could be in the display rules in the Business Modeler.
Here you should be able to find several item types starting with "cae*".

(BusinessObject --> POM_object --> POM_application_object --> WorkSpace Object --> Item --> CAEItem)

To first explain the behavior of the display rules, although it's called “display rule”, the actual Table is called “Hide Business Object Rules”. So setting them to “isFalse”, “Unhides” the types for the role (i.e. engineering). The value “isTrue” is hiding the Item Types for users.

In this case the customer had hidden the Default ItemType “Item” as they used their own custom Item Types.

"Item" --> Display rules --> Organization --> isTrue --> This means that Business Object “Item” is hidden for everyone in the organization.
Secondly it was also hidden for the "CAEItem" for the organization. (This is set this way by default in the BMIDE)

The combination, of the hidden “Item” type, and the hidden “CAEItem” type, caused the templates to be "invisible" and thus were not loaded.

The solution to this can either be:
Remove the Display rule on the Item Level (or not propagate it downwards).

Or if this is not desirable, add a display rule for each CAE Item Type, and set this to “isFalse” for the part of the organization as preferred.

It could look like this:

Newer pax files in NX Continuous Release have an added line to the PAX file in order to have the templates visible. This was not present in earlier versions, and therefor if older PAX files are used, this entry could be missing and must be added.

<FilterType>Simcenter Nastran</FilterType>

By adding this line, the problem was solved.

Dennis de Brouwer