Irony - the most beautiful CAD model

[andrew_canfield]

OK it's so it's been many weeks of lock down & it's Friday evening & a beer has been opened but my pet peeve has irked me into sharing my nemesis (again).

Why? - Well I have some responsibility for keeping a bunch of engineers begrudgingly happy with their workstations & here's the dilemma, imagine:

You have to design a keep out zone using a safety fence - easy. Time is precious so you download the parts assemble & move on. Job done. Happy days.

The safety fence surrounds many machines (which contain 1000's of part) & now a drawing needs to be created...The gate for the enclosure is locked using (possibly) the most beautiful model CAD ever, every facet of the embossed logo is captured in the drawing. The drawing takes ages to open.

I'm not sure if my favorite bit (of the downloaded model) is the embedded spring or the leafs which rest of the key cut outs - it's a work of art, see:

What the job require is the part number, bolts required & hole pitch details plus the space claim for the part - which is where the fun begin. 

I've had some success by exporting to .sat re-importing - adding a block to wipe detail, exporting , importing etc.

converting to shrinkwrap, exporting, importing etc.

Just for fun I exported this to shrinkwrap with holes, chamfere's, fillets, pockets patched, internal detail filled & then killed Inventor via task manager after 13 minutes.

I guess I could of recreated my own spaceclaim within 13 minutes, is that the only option?

Kudos to fortressinterlocks the models to download are amazing ( thankfully it's not a surface model which needs patching too).

Do you remodel downloaded content or just live with the extra bloat?

(shrinkwrap process joy below).

Not sure if this should really be posted to the wish list or customization, for discussion?

Regards

Andrew

[alewer]

I have created a screencast showing how I deal with overcomplex imported CAD neutral geometry: https://autode.sk/3ghZKbS

The steps look like this:

1. Create new part from template
2. Import CAD neutral geometry
3. Change to body selection
4. Turn off visibility for body/bodies you want to keep
5. Delete features that remain visible
6. Turn visibility of all bodies back on

I hope this is useful to you. Let me know if I need to clarify any of this.

[IgorMir]

In AutoCAD you better off to freeze the components you want to keep. Than all the unwanted parts can be selected by the cross-window selection as well.

Cheers,

Igor.

[gcoombridge]

Direct edit is one of my favourite tools. Specifically the delete function...

[SBix26]

@alewer  The only tweak to your process I would make is that Inventor allows you to select bodies to include/exclude at the time of import, no need to turn off visibility and delete bodies afterward.  (From what I've read, some users have run into such large models that the import process crashed when trying to load the model, but I've not experienced that.)

In the Import dialog box, select the Select tab, click on the Load Model button, then select/deselect bodies as desired, before clicking OK to create the model.

If you already knew that, my apologies!

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2021.0.1 | Windows 10 Home 1903
LinkedIn

[alewer]

@SBix26Good point, I was aware of that but I almost always use the method that I posted. If the model has just a few bodies I think it's a wash, but especially in cases where I am trying to get rid of dozens or hundreds of bodies I find my method faster and less clunky. I have never timed myself, so it's possible that I am imagining the speed advantage. Finally the workflow that I posted has the advantage of allowing undo/redo. There is real heartbreak if you accidentally fail to mark a body for inclusion on import--you have to start over and make all the selections again from scratch.

You do have a good point about crashing on import, in which case the method that I posted is not going to do any good.

[andrew_canfield]

Thankyou - nice workflow & pretty quick too.

I'd really like someone (Autodesk?) to write an add-in though, guess adding this to the wish list is the next step.

Following your method the file size was reduced to 40% - I toiled & produced a pretty inferior model (unsuitable for use really) but it's reduced the original to 0.25% of the original.

The wish list add-in would produce something around 10% of the original (?) - thinking out loud, Shrinkwrap with a sliding scale, slide to select the detail required with a manual selection too...

Regards

Andrew