Refile NX parts (by script)
Posted on Feb 6th, 2006Why Refile? What is Refile?
Background Information Each version of NX you upgrade, you’ll have files saved in older versions of NX. When you open the older file in a newer version of NX, NX will do an upgrade to the file. This is transparent to the user. Depending on how big of a jump of versions occur will depend on how much time it takes. This will result in a slower load time. Granted with the speed of the machines now it is very hard to notice. Now if there are assemblies that have components of older versions of NX then each one of those components may need to upgraded by NX when you load. This depends on the load options and other ways the part may be created but the potential is there. Since the first person opening the assembly will probably not work on the components, the components will not be resaved in a newer version of NX. So multiply the upgrade by each person that opens the assembly each day it’s opened. You will see a large waste in resources re-Upgrading the parts over and over again. It makes sense to upgrade all the NX part files you have, including the old and not used parts anymore. Why the parts that are not used anymore? because usually by law companies need to keep data for a certain amount of time after the program is out of production.
Benefits You will load files faster, Be more confident that the parts are able to upgrade (should run the Update-All-features application, in another article), You can have a good feeling that you will always be able to load any part in the current version of NX. The older the files the bigger the jump is needed to updgrade to the latest version. Example V9 file opened in NX4, that would take at least 12 jumps. It does work, but why would you want to risk the jump getting too large that other errors occur?
Beware Always keep a backup of every file before a refile. Never destroy your past. This is just good backup strategy. If for what ever reason you have an issue, you can always open the original old part file version.
This is what the refile_part.exe arguments are:
usage: refile_part [options]
where the [options] are:
[<filename>] refiles file </filename><filename>
[-c] creates components if necessary during upgrade
[-co] compresses the part(s) when refiling
[-d] convert all parts/UDFs in current directory
[-d <dirname>] convert all parts/UDFs in directory </dirname><dirname>
[-g] upgrade components
[-l] logs a short report to the syslog
[-l <filename>] logs a short report to the syslog and </filename><filename>
[-ll] logs an extended report to the syslog
[-ll </filename><filename>] logs an extended report to the syslog and </filename><filename>
[-o </filename><filename>] sets new file </filename><filename> as the destination
[-o <dirname>] sets existing directory </dirname><dirname> as the destination
[-r] prints refile_part (UG) release
[-s] traverses subdirectories
[-u] refiles UDF files
[-uo] refiles UDF files only
[-uc] uncompresses the part(s) when refiling
[-y] Fully load assembly, and refiles components
that are not at the current version of Unigraphics
[-f] Used with the -y switch to force all components
to be refiled.
[-ts] generates True Shape data only
[-nop] Do not change file owner and protection.
[-ndates] Do not change file modified date and accessed date.
[-dwg] Update and fixup drawings.
C:\Program Files\NX 3.0\UGII>
Note
This would definately require a script to wrap this application to make it useable. Also NX ships an application “update_all_features” that should be run first. This will determine if the parts upgrade from it’s version to the version your running. The ones that pass the update_all_features test can and should be refiled, others need to be opened it the older version of NX and fixed, then retested.
