Manufacturing: Easy 3-step process to bring your tools and holders up to a new NX version

Your tooling library may be working fine, but … if your customized tools are not appearing, you will need to bring your tool and holder .dat files forward to the new NX version.

Step 1: Located and rename your .dat files

First, you need to locate your .dat files that you are wanting to bring forward in the new version of NX. If you have the standard installation, the .dat files for matching will be located in: C:\Program Files\Siemens\NX 11.0\MACH\resource\library\tool\English (or metric).

Now, you will want to go to the location for the libraries in the new NX version and rename the OOTB files as “_bu.dat”. To complete this step you will to have administrator privileges. The contents of the directory should look something like this and the files you rename are “holder_database.dat” and “tool_database.dat”.

Step 2: Copy your previous databases

Next, you will need to navigate to the folder where your previous version of tools and holders are, then you want to copy the holder_databases.dat and the tool_database.dat files (for this example NX11 is used).

Step 3: Paste your copied databases into your new NX folder

Finally, navigate back to the folder for the new NX version and paste them in.

And you’re done!

That should be it! To make sure that this process worked properly, simply launch your new version of NX and verify that your tools are available when you try and retrieve them from the library.

For more information and instruction on this topic, watch our quick 3-minute video on how to display the tool and the holder in NX11.

Enjoy!

Al Kraus