CONVERTING INVENTOR FILES

[DUG]

HELLO IM FAIRLY NEW AT 3D PROGRAMING

MY QUESTION FOR ANYONE WHO COULD HELP IS:

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO BRING INVENTOR FILES INTO MASTERCAM? AS SOLIDS OR AS SURFACES AND WHEN WOULD THE EDGE CURVES BE USEFUL?

THANX

[Brent Wilkerson]

Dug >> Welcome

 

Now off with the CAPSLOCK first....

 

Goto the Patches link on top of page

http://www.emastercam.com/patches/v9/

 

Or download from here

http://www.mastercam.com/Support/Maintenan...n04Inventor.zip

 

 

HTH

[Chris Kozell]

DUG,

Welcome, as you see, some people are edgie about the CAPLOCKS.

Now, to answer your question, download the jan04 Inventor zip file (translator for Inventor V8)from mastercam.com. If you do not have Inventor on the same pc as Mastercam, download designtrackerV8 also and install it. If you goto file, converters, autodesk, readfile, change file type to inventor, and then open.

As far as surfs vers solids..... Its Personal opinion, and you know what they say about that. Edge curves, in MY opinion, are always good. Good Luck!

[Ajit]

I had copy this dll from link and Copied it to Apps folder in mastercam.

I had already Inventer 8 Installed on my PC.

but when i try to import Inventer filein mastercam There was no Option like

converters-> autodesk

other options are there like asci sat dxf Adv ACAD etc.

 

what i can do for this.

Please Reply.

Thank you Ajit

[Brent Wilkerson]

Ajit >>

 

File -> Converters -> Autodesk -> Read File

 

Then the "Files of Type" pull down select Inventor Part file IPT or xxxx'y IAM

 

HTH

[P_Scott]

Ajit,

 

What version of Mastercam are you running? It seems to me that the menu choices you describe are from V8. There is no option to read Inventor files in Mastercam prior to V9. I suppose you could have the person making the Inventor file see if they could send you an SAT file instead. Or update your version of Mastercam to V9 and then you could read the Inventor part file in Mastercam using the Autodesk converter.

 

DUG,

 

IMO Solids is always the way to go. You get a "water tight" model with no gaps between surfaces and the wireframe is not overlapping, as it might with the surfaces. You can apply toolpaths to solids just like surfaces and wireframe but in most cases it's faster and easier to select solid geometry for toolpaths. You can also extract surfaces and wireframe (edge curves) from a solid as easily as from surface models. Having edge curves is always helpful but you want to bring it in from solid so there are no overlapping edge curves from "shared edges" on multiple surfaces. HTH

[DUG]

Thanx for all the info

Im sure ill have more questions in the future.

Doug G.

***see no CAPLOCKS***