An effective way to improve the performance of an assembly is to simplify its geometry. However, manual simplification such as suppressing cosmetic fillets and other non-critical features can be very time consuming. Fortunately, the Wrap Assembly command in NX can automatically simplify an assembly by creating a “shrink-wrapped body” that does not contain any concave regions.

The Wrap Assembly function is very useful when you require fast performance and a fairly simplified version of your model is suitable for the application. For example, imagine that you were designing some tooling for a tire rim. You might only need to see an “envelope” (i.e. simplified version) of the tire rim in order to create the tooling around it. In this case you could use a simplified “shrink-wrapped” version that contains the basic geometry and performs faster than the original model. Below there is a picture that shows an example of this functionality. In it the transparent cylindrical body is the “shrink-wrapped” simple version, and the yellow body is the original tire rim.

At CADmech we have used the Wrap Assembly command to simplify several large and complex assemblies in NX and to improve their performance as well. We also managed to export “shrink-wrapped” models from NX into different CAD systems that did not have this functionality. Please contact us if you have any questions on the Wrap Assembly command or any other features that interest you.

- by Misha Bosnjakovic