Bringing Back Point to Point in NX CAM

Ever wish that the old Point to Point drilling function was still available? If you run NX 11 or NX 12 CAM, you now make holes with “hole_making”

As great as the new hole_making operations are, there are still some times when you may want more control over some of the engage and retract moves that are not easily executed with the new hole_making operation.

Good news!

You can get to it, it has only been commented out! Here are the steps to enable it in NX 11.

• Navigate to the …\resource\template_set folder. (For me it was:
  C:\Program Files\Siemens\NX 11.0\MACH\resource\template_set)^{Note: You will likely need administrator privileges to do the next couple of steps.}

• Make a copy of the “cam_general.opt” file and change its name to “cam_general_bu.opt”

• Edit the original file and uncomment the drill.prt by removing the hashtags.
  ## ${UGII_CAM_TEMPLATE_PART_ENGLISH_DIR}drill.prt  (see next image)

• The next section of this file is for the metric templates so if you want to see the Drill operation for metric parts, you will also need to remove the ## in front of the
  ## ${UGII_CAM_TEMPLATE_PART_METRIC_DIR}drill.prt
• Save this file.
• Re-start NX
• Check your manufacturing preferences → Configuration Tab → Template Set File just to verify that it is pointing to the file you modified.

The .opt file is really a list of .prt files that have operations you want to as templates.

The Drill type should show up as a separate operation type on the list once you uncomment it in the .opt file.  It will look like this:

Once you select Drill the Drilling Sub-Types become available.  They are not part of the hole making template.

If your goal is to access some of the non-cutting moves then you will need to customize the drilling dialog to add the engage and retract options.

There is a section in the Manufacturing Help regarding dialog customization.

Enjoy!

^{Special thanks goes to John Joyce for this tip!}