IGES and STP files ISSUE

[mike561h]

Hello again friends,

 

Last week I had an issue with a iges, stp file.

When I rotated it some surfaces did some crazy things. To make a long story short. Our Mastercam Tech said the problem is coming from the way the designer is sending the files. We unblanked the screen and alot of extra stuff was showing up. A clean model will not have any extra stuff when unblanked. We need someone who can tell me what to tell the designers so they don't send so much crap. we use Pro-E.

 

Thanks

[Mike S @ S4A]

Honestly, ask for anything other than iges.

You say you're "using pro-e" (to model I presume)

I imagine then you move into Mastercam to toolpath. There's a Pro-E translator add-on you can ask your reseller about. Or perhaps have the Pro-E guy output step files or parasolids....

The Iges acronym stands for "initial graphics exchange standard". it's getting old, doesn't support solid data, and is actually a tabulated text format under the hood. To see this for yourself, try opening any iges file with your nc editor.....

[Zoober]

Unfortunately, most cad systems need to keep the original un-trimmed parts of surfaces to reference for vector uvw etc. I am not so sure that even a "clean model" will not have rems blanked. Some systems require plane control, construction geometry and other items that define the shape.

 

Test: Create a wire of a square. Extrude to solid.

Now, delete the wire associated to the solid. What happens? Solid goes dirty because you removed the associated geometry.

That is what (more or less) you are seeing.

[mike561h]

When he sent me the file with no geometry last week. When I rotated it the surfaces stayed where they belonged. I was able to get the job done. I merged in the file without geom. to do the surfacing.

[mike561h]

I think i am going to have them send STP files only. I was told it was the best. What about Parasolid??

[mike561h]

I think i am going to have them send STP files only. I was told it was the best. What about Parasolid??

[Zoober]

Parasolid will work best

[Trevor Bailey]

try opening the sample translator files for SW and STEP. then try to unblank.......you will see there is nothing there and the files are clean.

 

it is a ProE thing and IGES. i have been thru this many times when i worked for Cobra/Titleist Golf and would beg the engineers to NEVER give me an iges from ProE, IDEAS or CATIA.

[peon]

Parasolids have always worked best for us rather than stp files. Although, we design in UG.

[gavetta]

Try a forum search, the pro-e export thing has been discussed in a few threads, here's one

 

http://www.emastercam.com/ubb/ultimatebb.p...t=028841#000007

 

and another

http://www.emastercam.com/cgi-bin/ultimate...ic;f=1;t=027131

 

I've been using Pro-e/iges files for years without much problem at all....but I guess some have trouble with it.

[gavetta]

Maybe this is just a solids issue with Pro-e, I'm only using surfaces and wireframe from Pro, so maybe that's the difference. Anyway, good luck.

[Zoober]

Trevor, even if I am using the Moldplus translator with Catia files, I will often see untrimmed surfaces blanked. Solids generally don't leave too much.

Many file types will come in that way. Try to unblank them, and you lose the trimmed surfaces.

I usually just leave well enough alone, as I rarely have problems with them. I don't do much with SW, but I see rems with a lot of file types with surfaces.

[Guest]

could try?

open iges, make solid from trim surface, save as parasolid. then open that parasolid, you should have just the solid at that point. any other entities that you need will need to be merged in.

 

just one way of cleaning things up that we use.

 

doug

[MotorCityMinion]

Are there multiple levels with quite abit of geometry? I've had the same thing happen to me when I tried to rotate and position all the levels at the same time. I ended up rotating one, or just a few of the levels at a time to get it to stick, and that worked good.