Looking for a better way to show interferences

[jpblower]

I have something resembling a robot arm on a moving assembly line where I need to show the area in the car in conflict with the arm in a certain position.  Then I need to take measurements. 

What I'm currently doing is using derived parts.  I create one part for the interference and one for the rest of the original component.  Then I overlay a new assy using these parts into the factory setting and give the customer a list of xyz bounds for the interference for each area w/ screenshots.  I used to have to do this for a few hundred part assembly.  Now I have to do it for a 30-40K part assy.  

Any thought's, ideas?

What I'd love to be able to do is draw a sketch on the cross-section of the pathway and overlay a red decal based on that sketch and take measurements. 

[salariua]

Xiaodong Liang just posted this on the Manufacturin DevBlog and I remembered your post.

I have thought about your problem when you posted it but no solution occured to me. Have you managed to solve it?

Please check the link and see if you can get something out of it.

[jpblower]

Trying to work out solutions now.  The best I have is to import the assy into Acad and use the slice command.  Then import back into IV to do the graphics and measurements.  However this doesn't update when I need to make changes and I tend to have a lot of issues w/ ACAD scaling. 

[jpblower]

I can generally get this to work okay when dealing w/ smaller assy's or those created entirely in IV.  However I'm importing from CATIA so I usually have to sift through 30-40K solids to find the error prone solids.  I wrote a code earlier that handled a step file but the computer crashed after creating several hundred splits. 

I'll look into that code and see if I can't get it to work.  Thanks.

[salariua]

I haven't checked the code myself. But it seem to be what you are after, let us know if it works for you.