#Extruding colors??
A question on a possible "weird" application of 3DS.
I do finite element analysis of power plant components. One of the results
that I obtain is
usually a "pretty" color picture of the stress or temperature within the
component. Typically
the pictures are contours, with RED being the high stress region, BLUE being
the low stress
region, and a dozen or so intermediate colors showing intermediate regions. I
am interested
in modelling components so as to display the stress contours on the component.
For example, assume that I am analyzing a boiler wall tube – it has combustion
conditions on
the front side, insulation on the backside, and steam thru the center of the
hole. I would analyze
this by making a 2-D model of the tube – basically a flat donut (a circle
within a circle). After
the analysis, I could obtain a picture of this flat donut with red areas of
high stress, blue areas,
intermediate areas, etc. However, it would be more dramatic for customer
presentations if I
could take this 2-D color picture of the tube cross-section and extrude it to
actually create a
3-D model of some length of tube. What I would need is for the part of the
tube which represents
the red portion of the 2-D picture to be red material, the part that represents
the blue portion of
the 2-D picture to be blue material, etc. Is there a quick and dirty way to
take this color picture of
a 2-D cross-section and "extrude" it so that the extruded portions pick up the
colors of the
original 2-D cross-section??
I'm afraid that I must also ask for a possible method that works with one hand
tied behind my back –
I have the EDU version (v2) of 3DS, and I can get parttime access to v3, but I
don't have v4, don't
have any IPAS, etc. (I have ACAD12 though, for the modelling, if that helps!)
Any hints would be appreciated – it may be that with my limited knowledge of
3DS (and limited docs
you should see what the EDU version DOESN'T have!) I have overlooked some
obvious technique.
thanks for any clues,
Dennis