Creating Gears in NX
Creating Gears in NX
There are actually a few ways of creating gears in NX. The traditional method would be to build expressions, construct curves, sketches, associate those expressions to your features, and eventually have a model.
Creating Gears in NX via GRIP
Another method would be the NX Graphics Interactive Program (GRIP). GRIP allows you to automate some operations in NX. In some cases, it can perform advanced, customized operations in a more efficient manner than using interactive NX. GRIP uses a vocabulary of English-like words, which makes it similar in many ways to interpretive BASIC or FORTRAN.
Here’s a link if you’re going to dive into the programming and set up GRIP files for yourself: https://docs.plm.automation.siemens.com/tdoc/nx/1899/nx_help/#uid:xid918127
There are also a few GRIP files that can be found on the internet. The following grip file has been around for many years and still works. Give it a try, it may check all the boxes for your design.
If you do decide to give this file “Gear.zip” a try, the method to create gear is pretty simple. Using 7-Zip to unzip the file, place the folder in a location that your able to access, start NX, create a new file and then Select File -> Execute -> GRIP, in the Gear GRIP folder select “gear.grx”.
My final suggestion would be, speak to one of our Sales associates about licensing for GC toolkit – product NX30624
Once you have a license file you, now have the keys to the gear kingdom. There will be a few steps to go through in order to have access to GC features in your user’s ribbon bar.
Steps to set GC toolkit within the Ribbon Bar:
- Open your NX version to configure the GC toolkit.
- Now use the Windows search tool, type environment variables. Select the Advanced Tab and Environment Variables button. Within the system variables interface edit UGII_LANG from “English” to “simpl_Chinese”. CLOSE NX!
- Reopen NX, create a new model file, review the ribbon bar gear, springs, and other features are now revealed.
- With NX still open, use Windows search again for Environment Variables, select the Environment Variables tab.
- Within system variables User Interface edit, in the system variables section edit, UGII_LANG from “simpl_chinese” back to “English”. And, add into User variables UGII_COUNTRY = prc. Then close environment variables, and system properties.
- File close NX, select the center button to not save.
- If you open a new window of NX and start a METRIC model, you’ll see that gear, springs, and other features are now revealed in ENGLISH.
Configure ribbon bar to remove GC items not needed.
There is also a Gear PDF in the follow root location of NX: Siemens\NX 12.0\LOCALIZATION\prc\documents
For more tutorials like NX Gears, check out our library of articles, or check out our YouTube Page for even more!
With over 20 years of mechanical engineering experience in the automotive industry with various rules as instructor, mentor and also providing IT support, I consistently strive to work effectively with others and continually exceeded expectations.
Post by Reese Shearer
With over 20 years of mechanical engineering experience in the automotive industry with various rules as instructor, mentor and also providing IT support, I consistently strive to work effectively with others and continually exceeded expectations.
