Hi Paul,

>>>I would agree with Michael and suggest you try ViaCAD

There is currently an open beta for version 6 ( http://punchcad.com/products/viacad2d3dv6.htm)

>>>Alternatively, if you are like me and also use Rhino we should have Shelling in V5

Have you ever looked at the "power solids/booleans for Rhino" from Npower? http://www.npowersoftware.com/rhino/proverview.htm just curious as that includes shelling



- manz

NPower stopped support of their plugin after Rhino 3, so honestly that plugin is probably dead as doornails. As i mentioned earlier, i believe your rail curve has a little bend near the end. But you could also cap that object and then shell it in MoI, removing both end caps during the shell process. I think that would give you a decent shell...

jonah

Hello Steve,

>> Have you ever looked at the "power solids/booleans for Rhino" from Npower?
>> http://www.npowersoftware.com/rhino/proverview.htm just curious as that includes shelling

Yes I did try their plugin in V3 and then their shelling was hopeless !!! but that was before I actually had the need
for offsetting a complex polysurface for our water cooling design....there are so many apps available now with more
control on shelling such as different applying a different thickness to an area but not all...

ViaCAD looks interesting so far ;-)

>>NPower stopped support of their plugin after Rhino 3, so honestly that plugin is probably dead as doornails.

I was just curious. I use Rhino mainly for surfacing and have no need for booleans/shelling. I use other products for that.

>>i believe your rail curve has a little bend near the end.

Well, it is not my rail curve, but as you mention, having the "cap ends" enabled on extrude, then selecting the end caps for shelling would produce better results.


- manz

Hi Paul,

>>ViaCAD looks interesting so far

I have looked at earlier version, but that was quite a while ago, I am currently downloading, but with slow feed from their site, so will take a look later.

I will also have a look at the latest release from Alibre when I have time (I have never used that before).



- manz

Hi Steve,

>> I have looked at earlier version, but that was quite a while ago, I am currently
>> downloading, but with slow feed from their site, so will take a look later.

First impressions are good and I think it would be another good partner for MoI. Nothing
beats MoI for its slick interface and speed of use and it's ability to swap data rapidly with
Rhino is critical for us.....were sold on these two but as far as shelling without spending
££££, ViaCAD looks really cool for that purpose.

Hello there,

Well I have done a quick jump into viacad pro demo (15 days trial) ...
I get some trouble to import some 'simple' moi model, but I have to lean it a little bit more I guess.

For the moment it looks like I have to stitch every surface from the object because everything is separate ... and the stitch command return me
error messages ... so I can't really test the shell.

Hi Fredrik,

> Do you know how SpaceClaim shelling compares to the shelling
> in programs like SolidWorks?

No, I don't really know much specifically about that, but my general impression is that it is probably fairly close.

- Michael

Hi PaQ,

>>For the moment it looks like I have to stitch every surface from the object because everything is separate

When importing the 3DM, select "Auto heal solids" in the popup


- manz

Hello manz,

Auto healing failed :) ... but it seems I have a trouble in the moi object itself (I've just report it).
I did some shelling with some surface created in viacad, looks impressive so far (so are the fillets).

I will have some fun I guess :):):)

I'm quite impressed by SC. The program is doing a good job on filleting and shelling. I tried it on some quite demanding things from rhino and it worked pretty well. Not everything worked completely fluently though. In some cases it got a bit comfused.
Took about 20 mins of fiddling before I understood the workflow, but then it was surprisingly easy. It seems to demand a fast PC, as even my super quad core pc was lagging behind a bit.

Anyways, SC handles consumed faces in fillets, and also moving features across surface boundaries (in most
cases, not all of course).

SW is history based however, which has it's advntages in some cases. But if you get the geometry from someone, history can be a constraint because you have to understand the sequence in which the model was made.

I think SC LTX is a companion of Moi if you are doing mecanical design. It's also good since it makes your model "live" in the sence that you can quickly move things around and fillet here and there.
It does not have nice G1, G2, G3 fillets like Moi, and not nearly the type of surfacing tools. So I imagine for product design, that the real shape design would be done in Moi, and then later you could edit it in SC and add the "mechanical details" to it.

-Fredrik

Hello,

I have taken time to look at both ViaCAD and Alibre.

Alibre professional, I did have high expectations of this. After installation/ start up the UI looked very similar to solidworks/solidedge etc, so started to play. The first thing I noticed where the lack of surface tools,.. reading through the help files and rechecking the web site, I did note how they where really classing this product more of a companion for Rhino,.. (Rhino for the surfacing), there was a plugin for this, but it is only for Rhino3~3. I made a number of parts with various fillets etc and that worked quite well, the shelling was quite unpredictable in the selection of open faces, most of the time it simply would not select the face (add the face as open) so would be left with an hollow part with no open face, I got a little annoyed with that, so it is now removed.

Viacad pro. This does have many options for surfacing but have not yet found a way to produce a G2 surface, even the "net" surface appears to be based on sweep over multi rails, but will look further. The filleting was good and the shelling had no problems with the various parts I made. The only downside was the variable wall thickness option, which for selecting the face had to be done via a list (rather than selecting on model), that was a bit of a pain as it was a case of having to select through each named face in the list to find the correct one.

Personal conclusion,
I will give Alibre a miss (it does appear buggy), if I am going to be swapping between an application and Rhino, then that application will be MoI.
Viacad, This is a possibility, certainly as the Viacad 2d/3d ($99) does perform shelling, so it would possibly go well with MoI.

Just my opinion,


- manz

Hello again

>>so it would possibly go well with MoI.

Maybe not!. I am now attempting to import models from MoI into Viacad, but on attempts to shell am being given error such as "Inconsistant faces" "bad curvature", this is from 3DM and/or IGS output from MoI. Some problems appear to be related to broken edges (which MoI does during booleans when overlapping seams) changing the orientation of the seams before boolean does stop the "inconsistent faces" on models with no fillets, but still problems with reported "Bad curvature" on filleted models.

I will need to find time to build the same models in Rhino to see if same error, but that will be a pain due to the amount/complexity of the fillets.

It may be a problem due to the import (format) as the same model created in Viacad does shell correctly, so I will need to check that as well.


- manz

Hi Steve,

I have also had the same problem using IGES from our parasolid modeler - EdgeCAD into Shark FX

You cannot beat native geometry for complex calcs which is why models built in ViaCAD work better.
Like you I will be doing some tests with formats / method and will report back here next week so that
people can draw some conclusions what works well with MoI.

Rhino & MoI will always be ideally matched for obvious reasons....lets see if we cant add a third app to
complete the bundle for shelling (perhaps ViaCAD)

Hi Paul,

>>You cannot beat native geometry for complex calcs which is why models built in ViaCAD work better.

I can understand some problems with 3Dm, but thought IGS would import with less later problems. I know different translators are being used Viacad~ 3d Interop and MoI~ Harmonyware, but would of thought better compatibility. Iges exported from Viacad do import back with no problem on shelling, so it just looks like formatting problems,.. maybe?


- manz

Hi Steve, I'm pretty sure that there aren't any formatting problems in MoI's IGES export.

If you have an export that seems to be formatted incorrectly, can you please send me an example file so I can examine it and forward it to HarmonyWare if there are any problems in it?

Unfortunately it has just always seemed that ACIS based modelers have had some difficulties in data imports, that is not really a new thing. From what I've seen in the past, the ACIS kernel has some extra requirements on the kind of surfaces that it likes to use, it doesn't really like fully general surfaces it likes them to be parameterized in a certain particular way.

It's possible you may have better luck with SpaceClaim, I think that they have put more effort into file imports recently and particularly 3DM imports.

It won't be too far into v2 until I add in STEP and SAT format support as well, maybe ViaCAD has better support for those formats.

- Michael

Rhino has a "Reparameterize" command. Has anybody tried MoI-Rhino-ViaCad ?

jonah

Hi Jonah - the Reparameterize command in Rhino can change the global UV extents of a surface, but parameterization has other factors in it as well like how it is spaced as your travel through the knot vectors of a surface, not just on the overall scale value.

If I remember right, ACIS is mostly sensitive to the kind of internal parameter spacing and how closely that matches spacing along distances in 3D. The Reparameterize command does not change that kind of internal relative spacing.

But I guess you never know - maybe it would help. If it does then it would certainly be a good idea for ACIS / ViaCAD to incorporate that UV scaling into their importer so that they could handle general NURBS surface inputs instead of ones that happen to have a certain structure.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>I'm pretty sure that there aren't any formatting problems in MoI's IGES export.

I was thinking the format output by MoI/Rhino is no good for Viacad, well, that is obvious, not that the IGS output from MoI/rhino is bad/corrupted.

>>It's possible you may have better luck with SpaceClaim,

mmmm, well, from the comment from Fredrik put together with the fact there is no "product capabilities" (well apart from file import/export), that there is no price on the Pro version (which is the only version available for download) there is also no comparison chart of the difference between the Pro and LT versions, and the fact the LT version is priced at £595 (GBP), it make me think Spaceclaim is another Alibre professional, "looks good, but very little under the hood for the price"

>>It won't be too far into v2 until I add in STEP and SAT

The Step from Rhino does import and shelling made, but I have only looked at simple models (but even those where failing with 3DM/IGS)
The (Acis) SAT from rhino showed problems (check object), but I have not checked all the various output types yet.


- manz

Well well well, looks like it's quite complex just to have a 'better' shelling command :).
I did some .igs export test in Viacad, works fine so far (but it was simple objects). However it's true the shelling wasn't working
so good when objects are not created in viacad itself ... I suppose the construction history might help to resolve complex overlapping surface.

Well I thing I'll give up for the moment, as it requires to much technical knowledge and I don't have the time (I'm a bit lazy when it's about
reading documents).

Looks like the first best friend for Moi is still Rhino (maybe not for the shelling), I hope I will find some job soon where I can use all I've learned
so far in Moi, and pick a Rhino license (a bit expensive for an hobby style of work)