How to import a gear profile from blender?

[Anonymous]

I followed this tutorial to generate a cycloidal reducer gear profile in blender. Now I have a set of vertices and edges that I'd like to import into Fusion360 as a sketch, so I can extrude it and mess around with it in Fusion.

How can I do this?

[TrippyLighting]

You won't be able to import this from Blender in a way that it can be used as a sketch, but possibly I have a better method. Could you zip and attach that blender file ?

[Anonymous]

Thanks @TrippyLighting . I eventually figured this out. Managed to import it as a mesh then section sketch the profile I cared about, fit curve to section and extrude as a BREP.

Blender file is attached, in case you know of a better way!

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

1. Open the file-in Blender. You'll find that the profile is constructed from quadrilateral faces - quads for short - and only the end caps are triangulated. So the fists this is to get rid of the caps.
   
2. In Object mode make sure the object is selected. Add a Edge-Split modifier to the object and apply it. This will split the caps to be separate meshes.
   
   
3. Enter edit-mode and select one face or edge of the top and bottom cap and press the L-key. This will select all faces connected to the already selected faces/edges.
4. Press the X-key. and delete the faces. This will leave you with only the perimeter, the actual profile consisting of quad faces.
   
5. Export this mesh into a Wavefront .obj part using the following settings in the export dialogue:
   
6. Open a new file in Fusion 360 an import the .obj mesh into Fusion 360 with Insert->Mesh. Use the manipulator to rotate it to your preferred orientation.
7. In the "Solid" tab select 'Create Form". This creates an empty T-Spline container.
   
8. Right-click on the mesh and select convert
   
9. The UI should by default be set to :
   
10. Click OK and Finish form:
    
11. Now you have a NURBS surface body and if you use the curator comb inspection tool you'll find that the edge has very smooth curvature indicating good surface quality vastly superior to a faceted .stl import.
    
12. Change into the Surface tab and patch eh top and bottom and then stitch the surfaces into a solid body.
    
13. This you can precision machine to your hearts content!

[Anonymous]

WOW, this is going to give SOOOO much better results than my method. Thank you!