Content Question(s):
1. Industrial component suppliers often create surface models of their products to hide internal detail and reduce file size when asked for CAD models of their products by their customers. As a consumer of industrial component CAD content, are surface models adequate in supporting your design needs? Why or why not?
Follow up:
2. Do you find the inability to section surface models in drawings to be a major drawback?
Follow up:
3. Describe the situation in which you need to section an industrial component model that may or may not be a surface model.
Usually, I don't care about sectioning vendor models because I'm interested in the guts of my machine, not theirs. However, there will be times that I need to see a cross-section of their model for a drawing or design documentation. Surface models make for very bad visuals.
If they're concerned about proprietary details of their products, they should model a simplified component. It sounds like they're looking for a way to get around doing the work to provide adequate models to their customers. If they want to hire someone who'll do a good job for a reasonable rate, I'm available. :-)
I also am concerned about getting reasonable mass properties from a surface model.