Hi Michael

I've been having a lot of problems trying to import IGES files into moi - most of the time they work fine, but sometimes they come in completely wrong.
Attached is a screenshot from moi and solid works. (parts are exported from Keycreator)

I can mail you the file if you need to have a look at it (2mb)





-Philip

Hi Philip, yes if you could please e-mail me the file (to moi@moi3d.com), that would help a lot. It's pretty hard to be sure of what is going wrong without an actual example file to test with.

It looks like you may have a file with a bunch of parts that butt up and touch one another with overlapping edges. That can possibly confuse MoI when it tries to join individual surfaces back together into solids, which by default it will try to do on IGES import.

It will only try to join items on the same level together, but if you have several adjacent parts on the same level that can be a problem.

You may want to try turning off automatic joining which is under Options > Import/Export > IGES options > Join surfaces on import.

But if you can please send me the file so I could check it out, that would be helpful.

Thanks,
- Michael

Hi Philip, thanks for sending me the file through e-mail.

The file appears to have pretty messed up geometry contained in it though, here are the results that I get with trying with a variety of other programs:

Opening the same IGES file in Rhino gives this result:




Opening in ViaCAD gives this result:




Opening in Alibre gives this result:




What happens if you try to import it back into Keycreator, does that seem to work?

I guess it looks like you did get a good result in a SolidWorks import of the same file... they must have some more advanced functions to try and repair badly formed geometry.

It seems pretty likely that the geometry is not formed well since many other apps appear to have a problem with the exact same file.

A couple of things you might try are to export again from SolidWorks - possibly after it having done some of its automatic repair work the result it exports may be more successful into MoI, or also try using STEP format instead.

- Michael

yeah it imports correctly.
wow, maybe they have problems with their exporter... this has happened with a couple of files.

I've imported the file into solidworks, exported again and then opened in Moi.

STEP seems to give the best results.


Thank you Michael!

-Philip