I get into a lot of situations where a customer supplies mewith either a step or iges of a complex 3-D part (generally a thinpart - think thermoforming or compression molding) - usually just asurface part, no thickness.
To go through my process of designing components to mold or cutthis part, I invariably have to extract either 2d or 3d sketchesfrom these parts.
Most times, I cannot simply select tangency or loop - there aresimply too many minute variations and gaps around this geometry, soI essentially go around the edges converting to sketch geometry.Then I am stuck with spending the next couple hours going aroundthis sketch and repairing gaps - some as small as .000005".
Now, I've come to accept that any translated data is never going tocome in perfect, short of it being a simple shape, but I wouldthink there would be some tool I could use to streamline thisprocess - a plugin perhaps? I'm thinking along the lines of beingable to set a tolerance for converting edges of, say, .001" - anygaps smaller than that are merged/repaired automatically.
I've tried increasing import tolerance to the max, but I think itwill only increase to about .00039" - and it still doesn't seem toaffect the resulting file in any way that would help my cause - Istill end up with minute gaps that I have to repair manually.
Does anyone know of any type of plugins or workarounds for theseissues? I am self-taught, so maybe I'm missing something obvious,though I've done a fair bit of digging around these forums, SW andits help files, and anywhere else I can find.
ThanksSolidworksImport export
To go through my process of designing components to mold or cutthis part, I invariably have to extract either 2d or 3d sketchesfrom these parts.
Most times, I cannot simply select tangency or loop - there aresimply too many minute variations and gaps around this geometry, soI essentially go around the edges converting to sketch geometry.Then I am stuck with spending the next couple hours going aroundthis sketch and repairing gaps - some as small as .000005".
Now, I've come to accept that any translated data is never going tocome in perfect, short of it being a simple shape, but I wouldthink there would be some tool I could use to streamline thisprocess - a plugin perhaps? I'm thinking along the lines of beingable to set a tolerance for converting edges of, say, .001" - anygaps smaller than that are merged/repaired automatically.
I've tried increasing import tolerance to the max, but I think itwill only increase to about .00039" - and it still doesn't seem toaffect the resulting file in any way that would help my cause - Istill end up with minute gaps that I have to repair manually.
Does anyone know of any type of plugins or workarounds for theseissues? I am self-taught, so maybe I'm missing something obvious,though I've done a fair bit of digging around these forums, SW andits help files, and anywhere else I can find.
ThanksSolidworksImport export
