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How to make 3D shielded cable? We can use HATCH make it in 2D but how about 3D?


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Good question. I've been thinking about it myself as I am currently working on a 3D piping layout for a tank that utilizes two stainless steel braided flexible connections. I haven't hit upon a clean solution yet although I do have a "kludge" in mind. Anyway, I'll be taking a keen interest in this thread as well.

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Nobody kill me (please) for starting about inventor, but a quick google turned up braided SS mesh like would be used for the connections ReMark is talking about (I'd imagine similar for the wire shielding) as a material for Inventor. Is there enough back/forth between these products that one could use materials in one program meant for the other?

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Yeah, I almost never do either, it was just a thought, but one I wouldn't personally pursue I guess. Only thing I use materials for is to adjust opacity if we need to see if Thing 'A' can be removed from inside of Thing 'B' without being cut into a bunch of pieces of damaging Thing 'C'.

 

But, I have a similar ? come up when I tried to draw and sheet of expanded metal that served as a heat shield wrapped around a turbine exhaust stack. I ended up drawing this awful pair of spirals that were opposite each other, trimming them off where the edges of the sheet would be then arraying them about a million times around the stack. It was gross, but it looked nice on the page :)

 

All I needed was basically a cross hatched cylinder, so obviously that would NOT serve anyone trying to do this along a funky, curvy 3D alignment, I'm just rambling and need coffee.

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I don't bother with materials because I don't do any rendering.

 

We need to rethink standards for producing drawings.

What is the purpose of creating a drawing.

Perhaps to convey design intent in such a way that the design is understood as quickly as possible and to avoid costly mistakes in manufacture/fabrication.

 

I don't use AutoCAD much anymore - but it is my understanding (perhaps I am wrong) that the Autodesk products now share common material library.

In Inventor we would use a cosmetic texture (material) applied to the sweep. Looks like the real thing without the overhead of modeled geometry.

Then use shaded view (not rendered - shaded). (this is the rethink standards part of the way we have traditionally done things)

I haven't tried it yet, but I would think the same thing could be done in AutoCAD.

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It bears looking into. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

My use of 3D in doing the piping is to sort out all the elevations (pipes and equipment) and to check for interferences. Once the engineer approves of the design it all gets reduced to 2D drawings for the fabrication shop.

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It bears looking into. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

My use of 3D in doing the piping is to sort out all the elevations (pipes and equipment) and to check for interferences. Once the engineer approves of the design it all gets reduced to 2D drawings for the fabrication shop.

 

I suspect that's the case with most everybody else too. Simple cylinder or circle swept along a path and labled appropriately should suffice. It's really cool to get down to that level of detail, but unless you are doing a really snazzy presentation to people who are impressed by details, it's wasted effort, in my opinion. People who work with this stuff are going to know that for instance a length of rg-8 coax is going to have a center conductor, one of several options for a dielectric, a braided copper shield (unless you buy cheap coax that has aluminum foil) and an outer jacket. If you peel those back in a drawing and lable them, should work just fine.

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I agree with you Jack but sometimes I get carried away with my level of detail and I think it would be really cool to show a braided flexible connection. Right now I opt for putting the flex connections on their own layer with a distinctive color. Unfortunately, the engineer I am currently working for is color blind!

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I agree with you Jack but sometimes I get carried away with my level of detail and I think it would be really cool to show a braided flexible connection. Right now I opt for putting the flex connections on their own layer with a distinctive color. Unfortunately, the engineer I am currently working for is color blind!

 

:rofl: Oh my..I can see where that would be a challenge!

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3D_TE_TI.jpg

An example of one of my 3D creations. It is a temperature indicator and temperature element (probe) combination we just started using in the plant.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]30625[/ATTACH]

An example of one of my 3D creations. It is a temperature indicator and temperature element (probe) combination we just started using in the plant.

 

 

Kewl. The color blind guy probably sees the blue bit and the gray bit as the same, right?

 

I have a nephew that's red/green color blind. Almost all of the traffic lights here are arranged vertically, with red on top, of course. He went somewhere once where most of them were horizontal. After nearly getting rear ended because he stopped at a green light, he pulled over and parked and watched the lights for several cycles to figure out what to do. Poor kid from Arkansas too far from home...never saw anything like that before.

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