CAD Forum

Over the years it has been noticed that the NX and Solid Edge are morphing together. It appears that "new" NX sketch solver and functions appear to come from Solid Edge. I was wondering if anyone has had some time to play around with the "new" sketcher in NX and would be willing to share their experiences- whether it's confusion, joy, frustration or other.

Hello Ryan.. with my limited use past and present... personally, I think the new sketcher is better, imho. But, I can see how the past behavoir and someone's muscle memory could annoy users.

I feel that the use of Relations vs. constraints is where most users will have issues. I still don't fully understand how "relations" work. If this is something that is something that is continually calculated while you are in the sketcher or if the relations are initially calculated and then "stored" like constraints. NX has been using ST engines to help with 2D geometry for some time now. So it would only make sense to push that technology into the sketcher. But to do so, would require a new sketcher solver. Which is what we see now. Does anyone understand how these relations are truly working?

My observation is that the 'New & Improved' NX Sketcher is a different way of approaching the problem - however IMO it fails to make any improvements in overall workflow speed/efficiency. So - take your choice, Coke or Pepsi...

Prove me wrong.

I feel that the new sketcher environment is actually harder to use. Trying to make changes to a sketch after it's done seems to be twice as hard to figure out what relations/constraints are and how to change them. I've disabled the new sketch environment and use the legacy one as I'm faster with it.

I tried the new sketcher and see the value, but I'm still mostly using NX1872 because I prefer to use the Direct Sketch environment, which got dumped before the new sketcher got introduced. If they would bring Direct Sketch back, I'd upgrade to latest version immediately.

Jim Elias wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 10:26 am I tried the new sketcher and see the value, but I'm still mostly using NX1872 because I prefer to use the Direct Sketch environment, which got dumped before the new sketcher got introduced. If they would bring Direct Sketch back, I'd upgrade to latest version immediately.

You can toggle OFF the new sketch environment and continue to use the legacy sketching on the newer versions if you need or want to. Go to FILES>UTILITIES>EARLY ACCESS FEATURES and at the very bottom you can turn off the new solver & UI for sketching . I do see that 2306 seems to allow you to change from the new UI back to the legacy sketcher to add new features. It's still making you use the new sketcher to edit any of them created in the new sketcher unlike in previous versions where if it was started with the new sketcher UI then you had to use that for doing anything with the part.

john@layketool.com wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2023 7:50 am You can toggle OFF the new sketch environment and continue to use the legacy sketching on the newer versions if you need or want to. Go to FILES>UTILITIES>EARLY ACCESS FEATURES and at the very bottom you can turn off the new solver & UI for sketching . I do see that 2306 seems to allow you to change from the new UI back to the legacy sketcher to add new features. It's still making you use the new sketcher to edit any of them created in the new sketcher unlike in previous versions where if it was started with the new sketcher UI then you had to use that for doing anything with the part. image.png

That's for the solver and UI, but the "environment" is a different thing. The Direct Sketch environment (discontinued as of NX1903, I think) allowed continued access to Modeling and Assembly commands that are not accessible when going into the dedicated Sketch Task environment... which has now become the only sketching environment, irrespective of solver.

I don't know why Direct Sketch got axed but it's the workflow which I vastly prefer, and one of the main reasons I generally prefer NX to SW (the others being: interpart functionality, drafting flexbiility, and speed/stability). For me, the various enhancements that have come along since the discontinuement of Direct Sketch haven't been meaningful enough to be worth losing Direct Sketch. So yes, I'm still working with NX from 2019.

Jim Elias wrote: ↑Sat Nov 04, 2023 6:11 am That's for the solver and UI, but the "environment" is a different thing. The Direct Sketch environment (discontinued as of NX1903, I think) allowed continued access to Modeling and Assembly commands that are not accessible when going into the dedicated Sketch Task environment... which has now become the only sketching environment, irrespective of solver.

I don't know why Direct Sketch got axed but it's the workflow which I vastly prefer, and one of the main reasons I generally prefer NX to SW (the others being: interpart functionality, drafting flexbiility, and speed/stability). For me, the various enhancements that have come along since the discontinuement of Direct Sketch haven't been meaningful enough to be worth losing Direct Sketch. So yes, I'm still working with NX from 2019.

Thanks for the replies. I think but not sure..that the Direct Sketch function had to deal with the ability to import large amounts of 2D curves and then assign driving dimensions. Goes way back to when NX was trying to convert all the 2D users to 3D and a few large customers that were trying to create large product machine designs- think assembly line type equipment. I have a feeling this went away because you can do this with Synchronous Tech sketches..not totally sure about that. Or it could have gone away due to the "harmonization" of NX and Solid Edge sketcher environments.

Finally took the time to update to NX2406. There are still a couple of little things I would like to get back from the older days, but once you get used to the newer workflows, the update makes a lot of sense. The "new" sketcher needed some time to get used to, but with the addition of the "region" function and the new navigator, I really like using it.

Not being able to do component or feature picks from the screen while in the Sketch environment is still irritating, but now being able to do live upstream modeling changes from the tree while in Sketch is very cool.