Creating Curves on Edges

[GibbsMachineCorp]

Hello all. I have to create wireframe off of surface models, it makes my files huge and hard to deal with. I use create curves on all edges, I get duplicate curves on all the edges that share an edge with the surface next to it. I use delete duplicates after to try and thin out the geometry, but doesn't seem to help much. I've tried fit arcs and lines when I create the curves, doesn't seem to help. I've tried simplify spline after I create the curves, doesn't seem to help. I've tried open edges when I create the curves, but that just gives the outside perimeter of the set of surfaces I've picked, I need all the edges. I'm not sure what break angle does when creating the curves, maybe someone could explain what that is for me. If anyone has some ideas I'm all ears. Thanks in advance.

 

X5 MU1

[JDowe]

If there is a solid put edge curves on that

Otherwise create curve all edges only on surfaces that that do not share an edge

then go back and create curve one edge on the remaaining edges

[Slixmix]

^^^This. You have to actually select the little blue circle with the green check mark icon to enable selecting solids.

[Müřlıń®]

The reason duplicates wont work is because the surfs are gapped and do not actually follow the same path.

 

Are you just using the curves for boundaries?

 

If so, go ahead and do all edges on all surfs then color the ones you need and delete the rest.

 

The break angle is for spline creation. The larger the break angle, the more faucated the spline will be.

 

I always machine surfs, but start with a solid if I can. Then create surfs and edgecurves from the solid.

 

Sometimes I save the solid in a separate file...depends how big it gets.

 

If you are needing all the verticles I would try to get a solid and create curves from that as that should yield a common edge.

[K2csq7]

What I would do is keep the great big file saved separately from the one that you will be working with, just to have as a backup.

Once all your toolpaths are created...

-Turn on all levels (see note at end of post)

-Select all ops

-Hit the button for "Only display associative geo"

-Move your cursor into the graphics area and hit control + A (select all)

-Hit the button again to shut off "Only display associative geo"

-Hit "invert selection"

-Hit delete key

-Save with a different name from the original file

Note: If you want to keep some surfaces or something, just keep that level Not visible when going through the above process.

[GibbsMachineCorp]

Thanks for the replies guys. I get solid models about 2/3 of the times so creating wireframe from that works good. Most of the files I work with have thousands of surfaces, so picking them one at time would not be fun. I was looking for the easy way out, after all I am a programmer. I know there is an unlimited about of work arounds for issues, it depends on the programmers imagination to come up with it. Force the software to do something it may not have been intended to do.

[Müřlıń®]

Create/curve/all edges/all surfs/

 

Enter......

[Chris In-House Solutions]

What about creating a silhouette boundary for the surfaces you want to machine. Then you just need to pick the surfaces and the boundary.

 

If you cant do that then there is a Chook called FindOverlap.dll which you can run and it may eliminate overlapping entities depending on how many entities you have this may help reduce size of your file.