solid from a surface

[CNCme]

Good Day,

 

I have learned today that create a solid from a surface, in V9, will only work if the surface model has no errors. ( or gaps ? ).I created a solid from a surface that I was able to do without errors. But, the solid was only a sheet body, not a true solid solid. I deal with other companies converted files all the time and they

seem always to have either drawing or converting errors, or both. Or is there a method I can use in V9 that I might be missing to repair or

heal these models for an error free solid from surface .

 

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------

[Rekd™]

I believe there's an edge tolerance setting there somewhere that will increase the allowable gap between surfaces.

[crazy^millman]

Try this Analze/model/surface then selcet all. It will then prompt you for a edge tolerance I make this like .0001 and see if that does it for you.

 

HTH

[Wally]

I don`t know if you`re running Solidworks, but I fix the errors in that. Then Parisolid into MC.

[Lee.]

As far as I know, getting sheet solids is all you can get from a surface.

 

Just my thoughts.

[Rekd™]

Lee, you can build a model from a group of water-tight surfaces.

[Gilberto]

One of the best features in Mastercam Solids V9 is that you can work with Open solids "sheets" and closed solids.

 

Sheets can be used to trim other solids, make 2D views, etc.

 

If you need a closed solid (ex: volume calc.) you can convert sheets and surfaces to solids.

- check the edge tolerance

- keep original surfaces

- make the new solid on a empty level

- create edge curves on open edges (if solid as errors)

- create points on the edges (screen/endpoints lets you know where the gaps are)

-fix the surfaces if needed.

 

Mastercam Solids is a lot more powerfull then must users know.

 

When Pro/E, UG, Catia can not work with complex surface models, Mastercam as always a solution.

 

We have many customers doing complex molds core/cavity/moldbase 3D.

ALL IN MASTERCAM Solids+Moldplus+automold

 

 

Gilberto

 

www.grandesoft.pt

[kwolf]

+1 to all above.

As another solution, if you receive many models from various CAD packages, you can use Rhino to fix/create/modify models easily and export them to whatever CAD you need. I think it's one of the best tools.

 

HTH

[crazy^millman]

Could not agree more Gliberto. I do some pretty slick molds with Mastercam. I just had to work out a problem with a Big part. I have to do a hexgon shut off in 600 places along a back curve that was in one direction in y and one direction in X. I could create a surface but would not be watertight for SLA machines. I had ot create all of the in solids. It tooks some doing creating my 8 costruction soilds to add cut and revlole from the one I wanted but I got it and it was watertight no problem and was like 55 mb each half of the mold inserts.

 

[Mark Lovelace]

+1 to Gilberto's tips. Also, if you are having trouble getting a 'water tight' set of surfaces from someone else's drawings, try extending them so they intersect, then trimming to each other. You can get some pretty complex solids from individual surfaces.

[CNCme]

Good Day,

 

Sorry 'bout the hour, I am posting a zip (IGS )

e77230_9ver32mach...tried to use analyze,

and it said it trimed 10 or so untrimed surfs.

Still not a closed solid...only sheets

take a look in mc9 folder

Thanks in Adv.

 

 

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------

 

[ 06-18-2004, 02:23 AM: Message edited by: CNCme ]

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

CNCme,

 

 

I agree with what everyone has said here and I have had the same problem for many years.

 

Thanks Gilberto for all of the tips!

 

His method will work great but I like to find a faster way if possible.

 

Long story short: The short term fix for this issue is open this file in SolidWorks as Wally said or Inventor and they should be able to stitch this file without incident.

 

Maybe someone from the Forum can do it for you. I will not be at work until Monday or I would.

 

These full power modelers have more robust iges translators that will correct the issues in the surface model.

 

At this point, if Solid works, just open the file and save the file. Once you have saved the file, you will now have a Solidworks model which will have an entension of .sldprt. At this point just go to Mastercam and File > convert > Parasolid read. change the extention of course.

 

If Inventor, the inventor model should work also, if not, try a different format. It has been a long time since we did that but it was the solution before we used SolidWorks.

 

Long Term:

If you do a file scan in Mastercam on your Iges file. Mastercam reports a tolerance of .00039". This will not usually stitch in Mastercam on a complex model such as this. Maybe you could ask the engineer to adjust his Iges export settings to allow for a more compatable transfer. As I learned from this Forum and also from experiance, Mastercam likes a tolerance that is at least twice as good as it's system tolerance. This S/B about .00002 or better.

 

Thanks and good luck,

 

Mike

[Greg Williams]

[ 06-18-2004, 04:45 AM: Message edited by: Budgie ]

[CNCme]

Good Day,

 

The sad truth is the problem with the model to begin with is the inabillity of the engineer

to build the model correctly . I talk to engineeers all the time and they tell them about the problems that I find in their models. They all admit that they dont know how to use their cad tool fully . Some of them dont even know that their systems can convert IGES or what the extentions the parent file is.

 

I also admit that I dont know everything about

MC, but if I find a problem or a method I dont

fully understand, I will seek every bit of

info to learn.

 

And I thank all of you people that have supplied this new info for me .

 

 

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

CNCme,

 

Keep us posted as to the fix on this issue.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[Müřlıń®]

I am dowloading a file named MURLINE77230.mc9 into the solids folder on the FTP site.

 

This was an easy fix for Mastercam without any help from any other cad system.

 

First I opened up your IGES file and tried to solidify it. It made lots of little sheets like you said it would.

 

So I tried something diffrent and it worked perfectly finding the error in the surfaces.

 

First I saved the IGES a MC9 file and reopened the file in Mastercam. Then I cleaned it up by re-exporting the file as an IGES from Matrercam and re converting it back to a MC9 file.

 

Then tried to solidfy it again using the .005 tolerance.

 

Only one small area would not solidify and I fixed that area with a couple of flat boundary surfaces and turned it into a solid.

Took 5 min.

 

HTH....

 

 

Murlin

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

That's great Murlin. I need to start doing that kind of stuff more instead of going to SW

 

Thanks for the Info

 

Mike

[Müřlıń®]

Your welcome.

 

Another little trick while I am thinking about it.

 

Notice how big your solid is after you converted it from the surfaces.....Now export it as an X_ and read it back into Mastercam and save the file.

 

You just "laundered" it again and it is 1/4 the size. You have a "dumb solid" anyways, might as well shrink the filesize down to as small as you can.....

Murlin

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Very Interesting

 

Thanks again

[Lee.]

+1 Murlin

 

I use Parasolid export and Import all the time.

 

It is great for cleaning up a file, especially a pontentially corrupt one.

 

My 2 cents.

[CNCme]

Good Day,

_____________________________________

First I saved the IGES a MC9...?

-------------------------------------

 

Murlin,

I tried your method, and I dont think

I did it correctly...oh, did you use mar0304?

 

I did file - convert - iges - read , then saved it as an mc9

 

Reopened the MC9

 

Then I did file - convert - iges - write, back to an IGES.

Then I did file - convert - iges - read, opened the file. Then tried to solidify ( using .005 )and still got error and sheets. ????

 

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------

[Müřlıń®]

CNCme, there was an error, but it was real easy to find because there was only a couple of surfaces I had to patch vs all of them.

 

BTW I think I used .006 srry....

 

Anyway, use .006 and when it says create curves on open edges, do it and you will see the small little surface that is open.

 

I put edge curves around that fillet and did a coons and it failed again on the two flat surfaces adjacent to it so I built a flat boundary on those two and it solidified just fine.

 

Even though I used .006 tolerance, I overlaid the origonal file on top of the solid and could see no diffrence.

 

All I was trying to illustrate was that you could fix it with Mastercam.

 

When I first converted your IGES and tried to turn it into a solid, it showed every surface to be open. This would be hard to fix to say the least. But when you wash the file, and Mastercam buids it's own file, you only end up with a small percentage of errors to fix.

 

quote:

---

did you use mar0304?

---

I am using 9.1SP2 with no maintence

 

I also have my system tolerances set pretty tight, I don't know if that makes a diffrence.

 

Oh BTW, in this case, it might be that I just lucked out and found the tolerance that would work and re crunching the IGES didn't fix anything. I have had situations where recrunching the IGES definately worked though to fix errors.

 

I tried .001, .003, .005 .01 and .03 tolerance then I exported it out and brought in and tried .006.

 

If you try diffrent stuff, a solution usually presents itself.....

 

Murlin

 

[ 06-21-2004, 08:11 AM: Message edited by: Murlin ]

[CNCme]

Good Day,

_____________________________________

Thanks Mur, alot of good info...I did see

the open faces. I was hoping that QC will

refine solids/converters to make this work

"you" have done more automatic.

Thanks again...need more time to play (non

productive work ). Play=study of MC to help

american Mfg.

 

 

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------

[CNCme]

Good Day,

_____________________________________

Operator error on this post

Tony G

X Beta Site

Almost Employed Senior Programmer

N.E Massachusetts - Southern New Hampshire

_________________________________________

End mills and tooling are like The "AMMO"

And coolant and chips are like the enemy

Under your boots as you advance in the

Manufacturing Battle

--------------------------------------------------