Troubleshooting issues with NX

Hints, tips, and troubleshooting that apply to MI Materials Gateway for NX.

Assignments made to an NX body also appear on other bodies

In NX, bodies can be cloned using methods such as: Extract Geometry, Split Body, Move Object (with Copy Original toggled ON), Pattern Geometry, Mirror Geometry, Wave Linked Geometry.

When an NX body is cloned, the default behavior is that the clone remains linked to the original body in an associative relationship. Changes to attributes flow from the original body to the clone, but not vice versa.

As a result of this behavior, when an assignment is made to a body in MI Materials Gateway, it will be replicated by NX on all clones of that body. This will be visible in the MI Materials Gateway window when the Bill of Materials is refreshed.

If you don’t want this behavior, you can remove the association in NX using Remove Parameters, which removes the part history and converts any clones to dumb geometry.

For more information, see the documentation for your version of NX.

Multiple copies of the NX customizations file custom_dirs.dat

NX customizations are listed in the file custom_dirs.dat. If you have NX customizations other than Gateway, or if you have more than one version of NX installed, there may be multiple copies of this file.

By default custom_dirs.dat is located in the folder path \UGII\menus\ relative to the NX installation directory indicated in the computer registry. If another location is used, this location is indicated by the value of an environment variable: UGII_CUSTOM_DIRECTORY_FILE. Only one custom_dirs.dat file can be indicated by the environment variable, and any customizations which are in other custom_dirs.dat files will be ignored.

Potential symptoms:
  • You have more than one version of NX installed, and the wrong MI Materials Gateway opens.
  • You have other NX customizations, and MI Materials Gateway doesn’t appear on the NX menu.
  • You have other NX customizations, and having installed MI Materials Gateway, the other customization no longer appear.
The solution is to consolidate the customizations into one custom_dirs.dat file, and either keep it in the default location for each version of NX, or ensure that the environment variable correctly points to it. Take care when doing this, as other NX plugins might be affected by this change.