Catia translator / Moldplus

[kkominiarek]

I see entities supported are.....

surfs

solids

wireframe

axis'

planes

colors

layers/levels

drilling features

 

Are print entities supported....dimensions? gdt symbols?

[Steve Biehl - Cimquest Inc]

nope, no drafting entities. I think Catia saves that stuff off in a different file, like a separate blueprint file. Like Solidworks does with a .slddrw file.

[kkominiarek]

...this means my customer will still have to send me a print, even though they'll send me solid or surf files of the part.

[Allan]

Mastercam has never supported drafting enities for catia, If you require a print have them send you a .plt file and use the readhpgl c-hook to read in the .plt file this will give you a method or reading a soft copy of the blueprint.

 

Allan

[heeler]

We have them give us a dxf file of the draw entities for use in Mcam. If they convert the space to draw before converting, you should get everything.

 

HTH

 

Glenn

[paull]

Allan;

Any idea what is going to happen with MCX and Catia V5? We've had the same problem for years, no drafting entities, with Moldplus and Catia V4.

They now send iges(for now), catpart and catdrawing in V5. Thank God (I think) for iges at least I can look at the geometry.

[Verisurf - Ernie Husted]

Look here

 

Catia 2D translator for Mastercam

 

Let me know if it works?

 

Ernie

[kathy]

Catia V4 has two basic 'view modes' - the '3D Space' views and the '2D Draw' view.

 

The concept is to model your solid / surface model in '3D Space', and create the drafting views from the model in '2D Draw'. Both view models should co-exist in the same .model file. This way you mantain the associativity between the two views.

 

The Catia translators will convert the data active in the 3D Space view - including points, lines, arcs, curves, surfaces, (Catia) solids.

 

In Catia, you can save the 2D Draw view as a .dwg / .dxf. That file should be usable as is.

 

hth

~Kathy

 

next lesson - Catia V4 environments...

[paull]

Thanks for the suggestion and lesson. We currently use the Catia reader from moldplus for the Catia V4 files. Works great for geometry but the drafting entities aren't supported. I could upgrade($) to the V5 translator but will MCX apparantly in the shipping process what would be the point.

 

So, what options are going to be available for MCX and Catia V5? Will drafting entities finally be supported?

Two of our customers are transitioning to V5 and I may need to panic soon.

[kathy]

paull

 

Are the Catia files from an outside customer, or do you have in-house Catia capability?

 

Ask your customer to save the 2D Draw space as .dxf or .dwg. That is the only way to access the 'drafting' data. This is true for V5 also. Remember - the data is very different from 3D Space and 2D Draw. The 2D draw entities are only a 'picture' projection of the model, and there isn't a real backwards association to the model.

 

Catia V5 can write to .stp, .igs, or .stl. That is how we plan to access Caita V5 3D space models. Soon, we will be moving over to V5 - that will be nice!

 

THAN - I can dump the (very flawed) CNC Catia translator!! YEA!!!!!!!

 

~Kathy

[paull]

Kathy

The Catia is from outside and begging and pleading for them to translate rates right up there with asking about MCX a couple months ago.

At least X seems to actually exist!

 

Out one customer does send Iges with the Catia but I don't think many dogs would want to eat it for breakfast. Ugly and all over.

 

There are a couple readers out there - Actify from Montreal and I'm trying to get at a demo from Datakit in France. Actify is good but I can't do anything with the geometry. I don't want to pay for a second translator as it cuts into the profit sharing!

 

Paull