How To Define the Defaults Level of Customer Defaults

Customer Defaults provide a simple solution for customizing your NX startup and controlling the initial settings and values for many options in NX dialog boxes. An often under-utilized feature of the Customer Defaults is the Defaults Level. The Defaults Level allows system managers to set the system environment for all users ensuring company or group standards are maintained. By utilizing the Defaults Level from within Customer Defaults, system managers at a higher level can implement the initial Customer Defaults most used by their company and lock any default settings that should not change.

This article will demonstrate the Defaults Level feature of Customer Defaults in NX2212 but applies to older versions of NX and other Siemens products like Simcenter.

Before setting up and applying a Defaults Level, it is essential to understand how they work within Customer Defaults. There a three (3) levels NX uses to control Customer Defaults: Site, Group, and User. The Site level is the highest and will supersede the Group and User levels (the User level is the lowest). NX will inherit Customer Defaults set at higher levels and apply them to Customer Defaults at the lower level(s).

When installing NX for the first time, the software sets the Defaults Level of Customer Defaults to Shipped, establishing the initial state of NX on startup. This level is read-only and becomes unavailable after defining the Site, Group, or User Defaults Level.

Like many other features in NX, the Defaults Level of Customer Defaults leverages system environment variables to customize the NX environment. The Site and Group Defaults Levels each have a corresponding environment variable that requires defining for either level to be active in the Customer Defaults dialog.

Figure 1 – Site and Group Defaults Levels available in NX Customer Defaults. In this example,

the Site and Group Defaults Level environment variables are defined in the ugii_env.dat file.

Read more about the ugii_env.dat file here.

• Level – the name of the level NX displays in the Defaults Level dropdown of the Customer Defaults dialog.
• Customer Defaults Environment Variable – the environment variable used to define the location of the directory (Site, Group) or file (User) required by NX to save and apply the Customer Defaults “.dpv”
• Data Type – the type of resource NX expects the environment variable to point to – directory or file.
• Default File Suffix – the level name NX appends to the <product> filename .dpv file (ex: nx_site.dpv)

When the Site or Group environment variables are defined, NX will create the Customer Defaults file in a subdirectory of the directory identified by the environment variable. This user-defined subdirectory must be named “startup” and placed inside the Site and Group directories. Do not add the “startup” directory to the path defined by the environment variable.

Figure 2 – A startup folder is required to be inside both the Site and Group directories. NX does not create this directory

Once defining the Site and Group directories with the correct structure (<some_location_defined_by_your_company>\<level_name>\startup), NX will display the level names in

the Defaults Level dropdown of Customer Defaults and activate the Default Lock State dropdown. A small lock icon will also be visible next to each Customer Default setting or group of settings.

Figure 3 – Site and Group levels are now available in Customer Defaults. The Default Lock State is also now available.

When the Site or Group level Customer Defaults are modified, NX will automatically create files named nx_site.dpv and nx_group.dpv and store them in the directory defined for that level. It is not necessary to make these files manually.

Figure 4 – Site and Group level Customer Defaults are now saved in the startup directory of their respective locations.

The User Defaults Level is defined out-of-the-box and set to a default location on a user’s computer C:\User\<Username>\AppData\Local\Siemens\<Product Name><version>.

This default location can be changed by adding the User Customer Defaults environment variable to the system environment variables or ugii_env.dat file. Unlike the Site and Group levels, the User Defaults Level will require a directory and filename to be part of the path defined for the User Defaults Level environment variable: