CompuServe Thread

We have had better results using STL files out of ProE – converting them to dxf with a free utility we found at the Avalon (now at Viewpoint) ftp/www site. If you have access to the web, try http:/www.viewpoint.com and look under the "utilities" section. The Autosurf route works but takes much longer. Cal Rodgers Profisee Viz

Gary, << I may have the opportunity to help a client who is using ProE by providing preliminary models that have been created in 3DS.>> This is not the best way to go about it. A 3ds model has an accuracy of .01 or thereabouts. For any real product, a model with an acuracy to twelve decimal places is required. Your model may serve as an undelay to produce accurate data but it in no way can be massaged into funtional data. As a product designer, I start in Pro-E and work bacwards. I allways start with the the most accurate database and work backwards to supply the nessecary outpu, be it a rendering or prototype. A nice rendering requires much much less data than an actual acurate product model database. << I am not familiar with Autosurf.>> Autosurf is, or was, a product purchaced by Autodesk from a company called Solution 3000. It is capable of producing complex "surfaces", that is, like pro-e, it has the horspower and math to acuratly describe every last square millimeter of a complex surface. It is also capable of generating toolpaths for prototype production on a CNC mill Autosurf was initially sold as a separate product, then folded in as an add on for Autocad. Then finally, what was left over, was sold to a company called Cam-ex << Also, from what I've read, importing and exporting DXF files seems to be a hassle.>> Yes an no, I have acouple of cad programs and I just jump around importing and exporting till I find one that translates. When all else fails I open 'm up in a word processor, compare them to ones that do work and figure out what the offending text is. Generally though, it goes pretty smooth. << What are the differences between DXF and IGES?>> I'm far from an expert so I speak from experience (trial and error). IGES is a language which is capable of describing geometry far more complex than DXF. If you took the front fender of a Dodge Viper and tried to document it in DXF you'd have to basically rationalize it into lines and arcs…good luck. IGES languageon the other hand, has ways of describing mathamatically a surface so that you can literally touch any point on the model and come up with X,Y,andZ coordinates. For computer rendering this level of accuracy is not nessecary. For the production of actuall real parts it is. A rendered surface in a visual rendering package (I.E. 3ds) essentialy describes a surface by laying out lots of polygons with 3 vertices. Forms something akin to a spiderweb stretched over a surface. Each polygone can be described in 3d space by 3 sets of coordinates. With a little math, the color, how it reacts with a lightsource at given coordinate, and what the resultant shade of color is is easily calculatable and displayable. This sort of display easily lends it self to DXF because each side of the polygone is a straight line. Because of the "smoothing" features in most rendering packages, that is the ability to average and blend the colors from one polygone to another, pretty real looking images can be created with a realtively small number of datapoints. If I were you I would document the design in the most acurrate package possible. At minimum, start in autocad, export 2d shapes to 3ds's shaper and loft them into a nice model. better, get autosurf (about $1500), model it and export a 3d DXF file to 3ds for a pretty picture. Better best, learn Pro-e or sit down with the resident Jockey and realize your design there. Getting it over to 3ds for a pretty picture will be a lot easier than going in the opposite direction. Windy reply ehh… Peter Kroko