Using Solids

[cadcam]

Hi all just wondering,

How many of you are using solids now a days and perfer them to cut with?

Or do you still perfer to bring a solid in as a surface & wire and use that to cut to?

On another thought What file formate type (Iges,dxf,sat,step,cdl,pro-e) do you ask for from a customer as a stanterd for your company?

Do you feel we are starting to go towards the file fomat STEP?

[Trevor Bailey]

I use solids & surfaces for machining. I mainly do my 3d machining from surfaces. It is nice though with the solid, if I am going to be doing core & cavity work, keep the solid. It makes life a lot easier. I also use solids for quick fixturing and some pretty "niffty" design work.

As far as file types, if you can get a native translator, I would really recommend that. IGES is still probably the most used, but more times than not, there will be clean-up work.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I use solids every day. They are quite helpful for design and machining. It woul dtake me about 3x as long to do what I do without it.

Re: STEP. In the company I work for we have in-house engineering. They use AutoCRASH, er, AutoCAD so at the moment DXF/DWG works for us so I don't see a migration to STEP anytime in the forseeable future. There are a few workstations of a Solid designing package which I do not know the name of right now, but I would imagine that we would use the Parasolid converter if need be.

JM2C

[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: James Meyette ]

[Turf Toes]

I use solids everyday for design & machining. In my estimation, there's no comparison. The solids are cleaner and you don't have to worry about whether you picked all the surfaces to machine with!!! Most of my customers all send in native files, which are already solid or parasolid files. I do feel like we are headed into the step field.

[KMaynard]

I use solids all the time ..there just so much easier to work with and create .. plus the associativity helps in a model shop enviroment...

[Scott Bond]

Hi

On my desk this week::::::

I have A model I made from a 2-d wire

A totally perfect parasolid from U.G. .

A print made by hand in 1957 .

A part I will take from A milar to parasolid.

And "a piece of Autocad".

I will make a parasolid for every part. This will allow me to identify all customer requirements correctly.I will then go to all parties involved, and set customer expectations to those requirements properly.

Then I proceed to program the part.

::::cadcam you asked::::

""""Or do you still prefer to bring a solid in as a surface & wire and use that to cut to?""""

I look at each job figure out everything in my head while I drive to and from work ,while I eat dinner ,and so on.So when I am at work I am ready to pick my programming options to provide, "the fastest way to the pallet". I use every feature I get my hands on to produce speed.

::::cadcam you asked::::

"""Do you feel we are starting to go towards the file format STEP""""

Yes ,I am ready for a new translator I think it would be proper to have all files with solids ,names on the views,copious data,and so on..

But no ,I am not convince that the critical mass of all of the cad cam industry could possibly get this done.We still can't bolt a Chevy wheel on a Ford .I also believe that each of the cad cam's want to use their own file extensions for similar reasons. Mainly;

I think they that they are the originators of the work being done ,and they do not intent to follow another cad system.

Until this changes we will not see good exported step files.

That's my wordy opinion.