CAD conversion and editing

[Claus Christmann]

Please see inline and below:

On Wednesday 24 September 2008 10:09:10 am Claus Christmann wrote:
> 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...

Hurray to procrastination...
Well, I downloaded brlcad and briefly looked into that conversion thing.
However, I could not figure out how to do it (again, I neither am a a regular 
Pro/E user nor have I ever heard of brlcad before).

>
> > 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

It seems that I can't  (for the lag of a better word) "load" the brlcad 
converter in Pro/E. The rather vague PDF calls for a file labeled *protk.dat* 
that shoul reside inside a /pro_engineer/ directory in the brlcad branch. I 
neither could find the file nor the directory. (I only tried the Windows 
binary download of brlcad since I only have a Windows Pro/E license.)

So if anybody has a source to a step-by-step instruction on how to do the 
export from Pro/E, please let me know. Otherwise I will drop this conversion 
(as Andreas pointed out the IGES conversion seems to work after all).

Regards,

Claus

-- 
Claus Christmann
Graduate Research Assistant

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

http://uav.ae.gatech.edu