Can I import a water tight group of IGES surfaces and create a solid? But the trick I want is to not lose the surfaces that make up one face of the object. I don't want knit the surfaces together. I want them to remain as split surfaces. Is there anyway to do this?
Hi Stephanie,
Welcome to the forum.
If you are talking about what I think you are. What I am thinking is you import these surfaces
as individual parts, then assemble those surfaces within an assembly, then save out the assembly as
a part. Does this make sense to you?
Stephanie,
Go to File>Open. Then select .IGES from the filetype box. This will make the Options... button appear on the right. Click on that.
The first checkbox will need to be checked, then there will various options. I'm not quite sure I understand what you are asking for, but do these options get you where you want? (try to form solid, but not Merge Entities?)
Stephanie,
I think you can do what you want, but it will take some extra work on your part. Import the surfaces and then Copy (with Offset=0) the surfaces that you want to keep split. Knit the original surfaces together, making a solid. At this point you've got your solid and some split surfaces. You might be able to use Replace Face to replace a face on your solid with the split surface, but I suspect that won't work. You might have to use your split surfaces to generate new split surfaces on your solid, say by converting edges to make a sketch.
Jerry Steiger
Let me explain a little bit more. What I have is a box structure, where one side is a patchwork of surfaces that outline the grain boundaries. I need to get this into solid works to use with a solid works add-on solver program. I have the geometry currently in a program called cubit and can output iges, acis, step, ... But when I import this, the edges of the grain surfaces disappear. I have tried to open the acis file with do not knit, do not heal, but that didn't work. If I save the outer surfaces as iges, then I could do what someone said and create sketches of each of the grain boundaries and make split lines on the surface, but there are a lot of grains and we propose to do this with more complex grain structures in the future.
Stephanie,
A little terminology getting in the way I think. You definitely have to "knit" if you want a solid, you just don't want to merge the coplanar faces into a single planar face. Most people want the single coplanar face, but I understand why you don't.
When you go to File>Open, and set the type to IGES, click the Options button that shows up, and in the General page about 6 lines down is an option called Merge Entities. This is on by default. Turn it off. That might get you what you are looking for. If that isn't it, I don't know how.
Best of luck.
Im sure this is too simple to be the case, but is your model set to display as Shaded or Shaded with Edges? (View > Display) I know imported bodies can default to Shaded a lot of times which does not show any of the edges, especially those of coplanar surfaces.
Chris
Sorry about the terminology, I use a variety of CAD, pre, and post processing software and each program is a little bit different.
FINALLY, SUCCESS: Opening the IGES with only these two things selected: Suface/solid entites and Try forming solid(s) makes it just right.
Can you explain the purpose of this? There may be alternative solutions.
Could you create a zero-offset surface for later use, then knit and solidify ... or delete a face and use the Filled Surface tool to create the solid?