topic Re: Outer Surface area in Inventor Forum

Outer Surface area

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 09:05:53 GMT

Hello,

I need to find out the outer paint surface for a casting.

please can anyone let me know the solution.

Re: Outer Surface area

Sergio.D.Suárez — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 09:14:12 GMT

hi, if you need to know what your exterior surface is, for molding paint, you should have the molding mold, and bear in mind that there will be subsequent machining operations after molding, to adjust important finishes and tolerances. Could you explain a little better than you try to do, sorry for not correctly interpreting your question, regards

Re: Outer Surface area

johnsonshiue — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:58:24 GMT

Hi! There are a few workflows you can try. 1) You can derive the part into another part. Then use Delete Face -> Heal to remove the holes. Then check the iProperties -> Physical -> Area.

Or, 2) Insert the part into an assembly -> Save -> Shrinkwrap -> Simplification ->select options to remove detail features -> check the iProperties.

Many thanks!

Re: Outer Surface area

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:07:47 GMT

Thanks you!

Re: Outer Surface area

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:13:26 GMT

Dear John, Thank you for responding to my question.

i tried both the ways, where "deleting face" got the area and by shrinkwrap we got area which is not same.

i am bit confused which area must be considered.

Thanks

KSK

Re: Outer Surface area

tdant — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 11:42:28 GMT

If you select the faces you want to paint and run this macro from your VBA environment, it will show you the total area in square inches.

Sub SurfaceArea()
    Dim partDoc As PartDocument
    Set partDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
    
    Dim selSet As SelectSet
    Set selSet = partDoc.SelectSet
    
    Dim surfaceFace As Face
    Dim totalArea As Double
    For Each surfaceFace In selSet
        Dim faceEval As SurfaceEvaluator
        Set faceEval = surfaceFace.Evaluator
        
        totalArea = totalArea + faceEval.Area
    Next
    
    MsgBox ("Area: " & Round(totalArea * 0.155, 2) & " sq. in.")
End Sub

Re: Outer Surface area

johnsonshiue — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 21:47:53 GMT

Hi! Please share an example if the area is inconsistent with what you expected. There should be a logical reason to explain it or there is a bug.

Many thanks!

Re: Outer Surface area

rregaladoUSLWT — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:06:12 GMT

This is out of date. Can you please update with current syntax?

Re: Outer Surface area

tdant — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 11:25:30 GMT

I'm not sure what you mean by "out of date". I just tested my script and it worked fine.

Re: Outer Surface area

rregaladoUSLWT — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 16:00:28 GMT

I am using Inventor 2019 and I had to update the rule. I believe iLogic is somewhat different between our two versions. I am attaching what works on my machine.

*Edit: I reporposed the code to be in Sq. Ft.

Sub Main() SurfaceArea() Dim partDoc As PartDocument partDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument Dim selSet As SelectSet selSet = partDoc.SelectSet Dim surfaceFace As Face Dim totalArea As Double For Each surfaceFace In selSet Dim faceEval As SurfaceEvaluator faceEval = surfaceFace.Evaluator totalArea = totalArea + faceEval.Area Next MsgBox ("Area: " & Round(totalArea * 0.001076, 2) & " SQFT.") End Sub

Re: Outer Surface area

tdant — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 16:03:55 GMT

Oh, I'm not sure how iLogic behaves. I've been running the script in VBA.