Hi all,

I'm testing out Alibre Atom3D, the hobbyist/"low-end" 3D CAD package from Alibre (formerly Geomagic/3D Systems/Dassault; Alibre is now once again independent), makers of Alibre Design (formerly Geomagic Design, etc.), especially in conjunction with MoI.

I've tried posting a new thread to their forums to share some of my (very!) preliminary results, but as a new forum user on their forums, some of my content is getting caught by a "potential spam" content filter. I've contacted Alibre staff, and they're working on it, but I also intended to post here as well with respect to the MoI side of things. In any event, here are some screenshots of a design in MoI that I'm trying to bring into Atom3D. The only shared export/import options between MoI (4.0 Beta Oct-17-2018; I haven't updated to the new February 4.0 beta yet) and Atom3D are SAT (ACIS) and STEP.

First, the part in MoI:



Exported as SAT from MoI, imported into Atom3D:



Exported as STEP from MoI, imported into Atom3D:



This is a view of an exported OBJ from MoI being viewed in Metasequoia; this is a view of the "top":



and this is a view of the "bottom":



My post (to appear hopefully shortly) on the Alibre forums is to enquire if this might be an import bug with respect to the SAT versus STEP data in Atom3D's importers, but as long as I'm also posting here, does anyone have any ideas as to what I may need to do in MoI to ensure connected geometry, especially on the "bottom" of this part. The OBJ *looks* OK, but obviously that's a somewhat different thing than the SAT or STEP data.

Hi dnm,

re:
> does anyone have any ideas as to what I may need to do in MoI to ensure connected geometry

Well, the main thing is if you modeled it as individual surfaces you would want to use the Edit > Join command to glue those together into a solid.

But if it is a solid already there isn't normally anything needed to do to it.

Is it possible for you to post your .3dm model file or e-mail it to me at moi@moi3d.com if you want to keep it private? I can then take a look over it and see if there is anything that stands out as problematic with it.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for replying. I've attached both the original 3DM file I was exporting SAT & STEP from ("dish3.3dm"), plus one where I explicitly joined all the objects together ("dish3-joined-solid.3dm") -- and then exported SAT and STEP from that one into Atom3D. I haven't looked closely, but at an initial glance, I don't detect any difference between the both the SAT & STEP exports I had from the original MoI model/file versus the one I explicitly joined (and then exported both SAT & STEP from again) when imported into Atom3d. I can of course attach both of those pairs as well, if that will help.

Thanks again!

Postscript: I should perhaps point out that it's likely, or at least possible, this wouldn't be an issue with Alibre Design Expert, which is the highest-end (and highest price tier) option, which supports 3DM import natively. The current license cost for that edition is $2000 USD. At this point, I'm particularly interested in seeing if there's a viable workflow with Atom3D, however.

Hi dnm, yes on your original model there is kind of a mix of some areas have a solid piece for just one wall and other pieces are individual surfaces.

To get the best chance of a good transfer you would want to simplify this to make it just one single solid instead of multiple objects. You can do that by selecting the walls where each wall is a separate solid, then using Edit > Separate on those to break them into individual surfaces and then selecting just the pieces that are needed to join to each other so that you don't have any extra surfaces on the inside of the object.

Generally it tends to be more convenient to try and keep things like this as a solid more from the beginning.

I've attached a version here where I've done that and also simplified a few areas like taking 2 adjacent faces that were coplanar planes and making one single bigger plane out of them to just clean it up a little more.

Does this version transfer over better now?

- Michael

Hi dnm, so also I took a look at your second file dis3-joined-solid.3dm and that is better with not so many individual surfaces but the bottom piece has open edges along its outer border.

Your best bet would be to make the whole thing as just one single solid unless you have some special need to do otherwise.

Some solids modeling programs don't like to work with anything other than full solids where there aren't any unattached edges at all. I don't know if Atom3D is sensitive to that or not.

- Michael

It has been awhile, but some MoI objects (solids or surfaces?) can be copy/pasted into the upper end Alibre.
(Should be an old post...)

- Brian