Body in white integrated workflow

1. Design engineers design the product in NX. This is done in the Teamcenter Integration for NX environment, meaning they pull files from the Teamcenter database and save them back interactively. Only design engineers can modify the assembly that includes part and JT files.

2. Body in white (BIW) manufacturing engineers run Teamcenter rich client. They open the engineering BOM (EBOM) using a revision rule that lets them see the approved (released) content. They create a body BOM skeleton with precise revisions. They assign only the sheet metal parts from the design BOM. Any multiple lines for the same part in the EBOM (for example, for different variants) are distilled to a single line in the body BOM. The body BOM is modifiable only by the body-in-white engineers.

3. BIW engineers in NX add welds and datum points to the body BOM assembly. Because all the revisions are precise, the body BOM has exact revisions of everything from the EBOM.

4. BIW engineers import a plant structure with JTs to Teamcenter.

5. BIW engineers create a process structure. Generally each process represents a workstation in a factory. The process references the in-process assembly (the state of the product to date), the parts to be welded, and the plant structure’s workstation. All of it can be seen in the assembly viewer. BIW engineers add child operations representing weld guns. Weld guns and the welds to be created by the gun are attached to the operation as resources and as consumed lines, respectively.

6. BIW engineers create a Tool Design Package study and copy the process containing the workstation, IPA, consumed objects, guns, and welds into it that they want to send to Process Simulate.

7. In Process Simulate, BIW engineers analyze the welds and modify the approach angles on them. The results are exported back to Teamcenter.

8. The user suppresses some of the lines under the process in the study that do not need to be sent to the tool supplier, including some of the product and work station contents. In the assembly viewer, the user sees the location of the parts, workstation, and weld guns in the process structure. Teamcenter does not display the weld angles graphically.

9. BIW engineers use PLM XML export to export the tool design study to a directory on a local disk. The engineers specify the ToolDesignPackageExport transfer mode specifically designed to export the desired content, including the in context forms that are specially processed to modify the BOM line transforms of the welds. This content includes the XML file along with part files in subdirectories.

10. BIW engineers zip the export directory that contains the XML and associated files and sends the compressed file to the supplier.

11. The supplier unzips the NX assembly and uses the nx_import_tool_design_package utility to load the data into an NX installation running in native mode. The supplier sees an assembly structure that resembles the original structure but is not the same. Manufacturing features are opened as parts and additional coordinate system objects are added to represent the projected position (the orientation) of the locations created in Process Simulate. The supplier designs the tool in the product assembly’s coordinate system producing part files on a local disk.

12. The supplier moves the weld gun to each weld and aligns it to the weld angle to visually ensure that the gun does not collide with the tool in each weld position.

13. The supplier zips up the part files and sends them back to the BIW engineer.

14. BIW engineers, running Teamcenter Integration for NX, import the tool assembly sent by the supplier to the Teamcenter database.

15. In the Teamcenter rich client, BIW engineers load the process structure and attaches the tool assembly to the process. By using the same transform as the IPA, it is located correctly in the assembly viewer relative to the rest of the objects in the study.

16. The process is sent to Process Simulate for validation of the tool design against the robot tool paths.