AutoCAD Inventor :: Unfold Imported IGES / SAT Files?
Aug 20, 2010
A lot of times our customers will send sheet metal parts for us to manufactur. unfortunately they do not have inventor and/or do not, or won't, send the flat layout. It is possible for me to convert these 3d files into Inventor sheet metal pieces and lay them out so i don't have to re-draw? What are the steps to do so?
So I have 25 years 3d CAD experience. Catia, Alias, Ford PDGS.I have spent 20 hours on Inventor 2013. Great program. Very intuitive. Have been banging out models easily.
My issue however is a Client has given me sone .stp's and Iges files to work with.They open fine as a .iam The issue is saving. I have the project folder setup, go to save.
I Get the "do you want to save changes to "XXXXXXXX.iam" and all its dependants.I select "yes to all".I get the "Yes" under the "Save" Column for all listed .ipt's...I hit OK.......Autodesk attempts to save.
...Then I get the dialogue box up with ! icons "The system cannot find the path specified" - The database in C:Users.........xxxx.ipt could not be saved
I have imported an IGES file in Inventor and I need to dimension and detaill the piece in a 2D drawing. The thread and hole wizard does not recognize the holes in the workpiece as holes. Also I sectional view does not display hatched areas of the workpiece even though I have the display option checked on. Is there any sort of feature recognition within Inventor that I can use to import all geometry so that inventor understands?
I am working with 2011 Pro and have about 1500 hours on the program so far.
I was considering redrawing the workpiece by creating a part within an assembly and overlaying the two pieces on top another and using refernece geometry but this might not be the most ideal method.
I've got some IGES files, which I want to place into an assembly, and then create a drawing of the assembly.
If I open the IGES and place it in a drawing it works. If I create an assembly, place the same part, and then try and put the assembly into the drawing it doesn't work.
Attached is the IGES file. I'm using Inventor 2011.
Currently using the following hardware; HP Z800 Xeon X5677 with 24GBram and 3x147 SAS in raid configuration
Windows professional 64-bit
98% of our work consist of creating idw drawings of complete factory's plants, large 3d plant models.
Therefore we have many subcontractors and from them we receive 3D step/iges models (size approx. 240MB), we want to be able to import these in to our models. But for the moment we are unable to import these files into inventor (due to size probably), it takes very long (over 36 hours) to convert, and most of the times we get a error... or inventor hangs.
When we are able to convert these we have performance problems because of size of our models.
So my questions are;
- why does it take so long to open, - how can we reduce these files.
Since we upgraded to Inventor 2012 SP1 on W7 x64 most machines cannot open or save out step or iges files. The translator shows as 'On demand' and when i save copy as the 'options' button is inactive. We just get the standard error 'Problems encountered while saving the document'.
I see lots of old posts but nothing relating specifically to stp files.
I have recently upgraded to 2013 FDS and now when I try to import Acad files (sometimes up to 2000 solids) it takes virtually a full day to import one file. When I had 2011 I could import these files much faster.
i have imported a IGES file from Catia to Softimage 2012, i am not able to export it to 3dsmax 2012, if i do this through fbx, obj or other formats mesh is tearing,
I have been building a library of beams for our robotics department for my work. They need iges files to put into weldpro. When I am converting to iges sometimes i get this error message, Unsupported photometric object light type. Not really sure how to fix it, like I said sometime this happens and sometimes it doesn't.Here is the command box text,
I'm currently creating a procedure to manage a standard part library.
For that, I'm trying to import downloaded STEP files from suppliers online libraries, and some of these STEP files contain assemblies.
I can open them as wanted in Inventor (1 .IAM and .IPT files), problem is I can't edit .IPT names. I can only rename them in Windows, but I would like to rename in Inventor before saving for the first time.
I would like to have something like that, with "Assembly" the assembly name:
I have never used the unfold command before. It seemed simple enough, draw the part, extrude, turn into sheet metal, set defaults and unfold to make a flat pattern. It will not let me unfold. The dialog box comes up, but will not allow me to pick a flat surface or bends....
I'm having an issue with some similar pieces of sheet metal. They are created with a face, then I place a fold, then I need to unfold/refold it so I can place holes while it's unfolded and have them remain as true holes.
2 of the 3 parts do this just fine, but one particular will unfold normally, but the refold, even though it succeeds, does not actually do any refolding, I'm just left with the flattened part.
Every sketch is fully constrained. I've experimented with changing the sheet metal rules.
I want to creat a hollow cylinder. But I need to be able to unfold it to have a layout of the cylinder. So that when this DWG goes to the floor the technicans knows how much he/she will need from the sheet to roll the cylinder.
I am drawing the hull of a plywood hard chine boat with Inventor.
Basically there are a number of boat stations that are drawn in as sketches on parallel and spaced planes. Stations are drawn as series of straight line segments representing the hard chine technique used for this particular boat.
The plank is created as a lofted surface passing through each corresponding straight line segment of all stations.Surface is then thickened and it becomes a sheet metal.
I am unable to unfold or better to create a flat pattern from the sheet metal. The program correctly complains about the lack of bends in the sheet metal: there are infacts no bends as the plank is a continuous curved surface of which I would like to obtain a flat template for CNC cutting.
I doubt the problem comes from compound twisting/stretching of the surface since the stations' geometry comes from an existing design of which several hundred plywood boats have actually been built.
Is there a way I can tell Inventor which folds to fold or unfold when creating a flat pattern? I want to bend some C-Channel INWARD and Inventor doesn't seem to be able to do that. When it's formed C-Channel, I can bend the legs and all that but I don't want those legs to unfold when I create a flat pattern.
I have a conical shaped part that Inventor 2012 will allow me to unfold, but will not refold accurately. When the refold is complete it should roll back up and be .01 degrees from completely round. But instead it leaves about 60deg of opening. I need to cut out 120+ slots out of the face of the metal, but once I do this while in the unfolded state, it will not refold at all...not that it owuld matter if it, seeing as though it refold inaccurately.
using inventor for FEA analysis in inventor on an imported SolidWorks file. But I am now having trouble creating a good mesh on an assembly. The largest part of the assembly gets an error "mesh failed: body failure:filename". I have attached a snip of the aftermath of the "mesh view".
For some reason I cannot unfold sheet metal product on attached file. Where have I made a mistake? I used extruding, also sheet metal thickness from rule has been set to 2mm. Rest are default values.
I'm looking to unfold the attached sheet metal elbow and am unable to do so. After modeling the part I was also unable to rip an opening to split the part. I opted to cut an opening with a profile, but I am still unable to unfold the part. The probelm is likely obvious and I believe it is because I used part splits to create the different sections.
I created a part that spans between two other pieces. The original part model does not have a twist in the "flat" surfaces, so it unfolds just fine, but it also does not represent the way the actual part fits, so it is difficult to determine if any other parts are fitting correctly up to it.
I had a problem getting a part to unfold before, and I was shown a method of creating a surface body and a thicken, which I have done with this part, but as of yet have had no success unfolding this part.
Is there anything that I can do since the sides are twisted and not planar?
it seems that there's a setting so that when it imports steps it assigns weld bead colours to all the surfaces of the imported model. is there a way to change this behaviour so that it imports with solid colour surfaces instead?
Automation of the sheet metal bending parts unfold /refold in vb.net for Inventor 2013.
I want to unfold the part with selecting the one of the face as stationary face and further selecting the bend/ bends with reference to face in vb.net
For refold, I have to select the stationary reference automatically , based on some criteria, and further to select the single and multiple bends by using API.
Also, I want to find the bends and faces relationship i.e.
How to find the bend associated with number of faces, how to find face entity using internal name ;
The code I tried I am attaching here for your reference.
I have modeled this "low-poly" hand in 3d max. Here's how it looks with the "NURMS toggle" turned on. What I need is to somehow really turn it into NURBS, to be able to export it as IGES and then import into Inventor.
How do i export a .iam to STEP or STP or IGES without the three being expordted? i dont want the costumers to be able to see the anything in the three but 1 file (base1 or something).
What i do today is, i make a new part and derive the .iam file and then export it to step but this is getting hard to do when you have many .iam files.