Create a silhouette

[Anonymous]

Hi all,
Probably best to view the attached .jpg first.
I’m looking to get from item ‘A’ (see .jpg) to item ‘B’? I’m starting w/ 3D solids, running a flatten routine on it and removing duplicate lines. I want to take it a step further and programmatically create a silhouette of the tool for a plant layout. But I’m having a bit of trouble w/ the logic.
This example is a simple one and only takes a few minutes to do, but for more complex items, cleaning it up or re-tracing can be very time consuming.
Has anyone got any advice or maybe some sample code to get me started?
VBA or Lisp......

Thank you Message was edited by: KeystoneKopp

[Anonymous]

Try AutoCAD's "boundary" command against your 3D solids.

[Anonymous]

See soldraw, solview and profile AutoCAD commands

--
Saludos, Ing. Jorge Jimenez, SICAD S.A., Costa Rica


wrote in message news:5154115@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi all,
Probably best to view the attached .jpg first.
I'm looking to get from item 'A' (see .jpg) to item 'B'? I'm starting w/ 3D
solids, running a flatten routine on it and removing duplicate lines. I
want to take it a step further and programmatically create a silhouette of
the tool for a plant layout But I'm having a bit of trouble w/ the logic.
This example is a simple one and only takes a few minutes to do, but for
more co
mplex items, cleaning it up or re-tracing can be very time consuming.
Has anyone got any advice or maybe some sample code to get me started?
VBA or Lisp......

Thank you

Message was edited by: KeystoneKopp

[Anonymous]

Thank you guys for the quick replies.....and I probably should've been clearer. I'm not always dealing with 3D solids. Sometimes it's a car panel (like an underbody) and it's just a webbing of lines, splines, arcs, circles, etc..
Other times it's a Robot blob. Kind of a cloud of lines representing the travel of a robot. And for clean system layouts everything must reside on Z zero..
We're that far right now....we just want to clean up the unnecessary details. Message was edited by: KeystoneKopp

[Anonymous]

Put a circle around the whole thing and then use
the boundary command picking a point between
your object and the circle. You will get an outline
of your object as a pline or region.

--
gl - Paul
wrote in message news:5154115@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi all,
Probably best to view the attached .jpg first.
I'm looking to get from item 'A' (see .jpg) to item 'B'? I'm starting w/ 3D
solids, running a flatten routine on it and removing duplicate lines. I
want to take it a step further and programmatically create a silhouette of
the tool for a plant layout But I'm having a bit of trouble w/ the logic.
This example is a simple one and only takes a few minutes to do, but for
more co
mplex items, cleaning it up or re-tracing can be very time consuming.
Has anyone got any advice or maybe some sample code to get me started?
VBA or Lisp......

Thank you

Message was edited by: KeystoneKopp

[Anonymous]

Thank you,
I had been playing around w/ 'Boundary' after the first response, but I kept selecting stuff as my boundary set....that does 2/3 of what I need to do. Great w/ solids and w/ simple lines. Doesn't work w/ 3dfaces (what my car panels end up as by the time that we translate them from CATIA)....any other ideas

[Anonymous]

For anybody who might be looking for the answer to making the silhouette w/ 3dfaces you can't explode them using the .explode command. So use the Express tools Flatten.lsp first, then then run the boundary routine.