CAD conversion and editing

[Claus Christmann]

Please see inline and below...

On Wednesday 24 September 2008 08:59:12 am Breakable wrote:
> Hi,
> Anybody got any success for editing CAD files for the phone case?
> Basically I am trying to get them open in brlcad (which seems to be the
> best free CAD software ever),
> without any success yet.
> I had some success in VariCad demo (proprietary) where parts of the design
> are imported using STEP format, but it does not seem good enough, as I see
> about 50% of the shapes usually.
> IGES on the other hand seems like a total dissaster.
The IGES files I created seemed to work in Pro/E and CATIA V5. Can you figure 
out if the files are corrupted or if it is a non-working import filter in 
brlcad that does not work?
Have you tried opening a single file and not the complete assembly?

> The only solution I currently see is buying or pirating the Pro/ENGINEER to
> edit or convert them  to brlcad .g format using the Pro/E to BRLCAD
> converter plugin for Pro/ENGINEER from the brlcad suite. Buying or pirating
> for this task is not the option I like.
> Anybody that has a  Pro/ENGINEER license can assist with that?
> There is a nice description how to do it in
> http://brlcad.org/w/images/6/66/Converting_Geometry.pdf
> in section 4.9 page 27 of pdf.
I have access to a Pro/E licencense and can look into that. However, it won't 
happen till the weekend...

> After this is done properly, maybe the BRLCAD to DXF converter can be used
> to
> improve accessibility of design files for those that have AutoCad.
DXF is essentially a 2D format. Since there is no conversion from 3D to 2D 
that does not lose information, a "usefull" conversion heavily depends on the 
need of the user of those 2D DXF files. 

IF the list could agree on a limited number of planes/slices through the 3D 
model I might be willing to put the time into creating them.


> If this issue wont be resolved I don't believe a community effort to build
> on the openness
> of the device will ever succeed.
>
> Regards,
> Ignas

As said above, I will look into this brlcad over the weekend and look into the 
conversion of the files into the appropriate format. However, I can't promise 
anything... (BTW, I have never heard of brlcad, but I also hardly use 
anything else than CATIA these days...)

Regards,

Claus

-- 
Claus Christmann
Graduate Research Assistant

Georgia Institute of Technology
270 Ferst Drive
Atlanta, GA 30332-0150, USA

http://uav.ae.gatech.edu