Steve Farentinos asked:
>> into the parametric/variational
solid modeler we use, Varimetrix, join the surfaces into a solid, and
continue on from there as if the solid was created within the system. The
IGES data becomes part of the parametric history and the solid can be used
in boolean operations and features can be applied to it. This can't be the
only system capable of doing this, can it? >>
Sadly Steve, most solid modelors do not offer this capability, especialy the
inexpensive ones. One point worth making here is that if you use some nice
features such as bosses, tapered holes, and ribs for example, then when you
blast this out to another CAD system via IGES, you lose the associativity
between these elements. For example, try to move the boss over 2" on the IGES
file. You will end up having to move each surface. Try converting the IGES
surface into a solid, and then remove a counter-bored hole and surrounding boss.
You will have to make quite a number of edits to do this, whereas in the
original system, you can simply remove these elemens from the state tree and
recompute the solid. A state tree is simply a recording of each feature used to
construct the model together with their relationship to other features.
Peter H. Gien
POGO International, Inc.
71773.3150@compuserve.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:37:08 EEST