convert sheet solid into real solid

[jlw™]

Is there a way inside Mastercam to convert a sheet solid into a real solid?

[Orvie]

I had a customer that gave me sheet solids often.
I think the native file was inventor.

I opened them up in Solidworks and saved out as STEP file to fix this.
Within Mastercam, I do not know of a way..

 

[pullo]

yes there is . thing is , even if I tell you it still won't solve your problem. 

You  get a sheet because the solid is not airtight and  the missing seam has to be found.

Here is a little experiment to show you this.

1. draw a solid cube .

2. from model prep using remove face , remove one face. You now end up with a sheet solid.

3. Now create a flat or ruled surface to make up for the missing "pane".

4 . NOW USING SOLIDS: FROM SURFACES  choose the sheet and the one surface to create a solid and choose "Blank " as to what to do with the debris , so it does not confuse you.

      Presto , you have healed your Sheet back into a solid . 

     The thing is YOU KNEW WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS with the cube sheet... When you get a part with a thousand surfaces , we have no analytic  tool in Mcam other than "Create curves on open edges to guide you as to where the problematic crevasse is ( it usually is that) .

So what are the options ? 

   1.  Using "Create curves on open edges " try to create a solid from what you have if you want to keep it in the Mcam realm.

   2.  Solve your problem outside of Mcam . Solidworks has a system for repairing solids.  ZW3d is a very inexpensive system that will patch things up and then there is specialist stuff like Caddoctor , Cadfix and one more but I never remember it's name....

Gracjan

 

[#Rekd™]

9 hours ago, jlw™ said:

Is there a way inside Mastercam to convert a sheet solid into a real solid?

Do you have a file to share?

[heavychevy2155]

I would get that a lot with ProE models.

[JParis]

Wondering...Did the file start as an iges file?

If so, could you just request a different format and get a better starting file?

[jlw™]

The file started as a step file from a friend.

Here's the file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vx2zmfw2x2a6w0p/pocket.stp?dl=0

[Orvie]

pocket.mcam

[pullo]

just as I thought . it's the sharp ridges that might cause pain here. I brought it in as surfaces and just a tweak of tolerance from my usual 0.025 mm to 0.05mm made it into a proper solid . So that was easy.  Using a larger tolerance for stitching does not make the part any less precise , it is just a precision to use for Mastercam to see it as a solid.

No physical editing was needed here.

[JoshC]

Yea what i do to repair these is what Pulo said, Basically create surfaces off the solid, then find the missing face (this can be the hard part but you might get lucky and maybe its a big easy to find missing face) then fill that missing face by building a new surface, once its airtight with surfaces you can then convert those surfaces back to solids. 

If you get this problem often i think others mentioned some other cad systems that do a good job at this, you can certainly get this task done in mastercam but if you get it very often and really want an easier solution I have used SpaceClaim and it does an excellent job and at this task since spaceclaim specializes in model repair.

[jlw™]

I get this so rarely I couldn't remember how to do it.  I think Gracjan stated the way I fixed it last time.  Just open up the stitching tolerance.  Thanks gentlemen!