How to colorize/hatch individual faces or features of a 3d solid

[gatordoc]

Hello everyone,

 

I have been tasked with making a feature/hole chart for a complex cast & machined part.

 

What the quality engineers want is color-coding of the actual features to denote which machining operation they are cut in. It's intended to be a quick reference for the machine operators to help them identify if there has been a missed operation, broken tool, etc...

 

What I have done in the past with simpler parts is import the .stp file, then FLATSHOT each of the views. I HATCH (solid) the boundary of the machined feature, then add the hatch pattern to a layer for the appropriate OP number. Callouts are added to the layout in paper space, and it's released for issue.

 

The problem with the new parts that I am working with is that they are MUCH more complex than the others I have done (50-60 machined features, complex compound shapes and curves, etc...), so using FLATSHOT results in many, many broken boundaries and edges. This has made editing them to get HATCH to work exponentially more tedious and time consuming.

 

I've tried to hatch by picking internal points rather than by manually selecting boundaries, but it takes 5-10 minutes for my machine to finish "analyzing the selected data" and almost universally fails to generate a hatch. When it does work, the hatch is incomplete, due to curves and angles in the machined surface.

 

The above method does work, but it's causing me to neglect other projects due to the time required.

 

What I am hoping for is a (comparatively) simple/easy way to accomplish this directly on the 3d solid of the part to help speed things up. Advice on doing this in 2d AutoCAD would also be appreciated, if anyone has any ideas.

 

I am using Inventor suite 2008, but I am not well versed with Inventor or the 3d capabilities of AutoCAD. I use Mechanical Desktop 2008 for the majority of my CAD work. We are supposed to be getting an update sometime soon, but I am not holding my breath and it is not likely to happen in time to help me with this project regardless.

 

I cannot post images of the part or the files because this is for a customer, but if you need a visual of what I am trying to do I can probably come up with something.

 

Thanks for any help/input.

[Cad64]

So you're using Mechanical Desktop? Not Autocad?

 

In Autocad it is simple to add color or materials to individual faces of your part, then render out a color image. But I don't know anything about Mechanical Desktop.

[JD Mather]

I use Mechanical Desktop 2008 for the majority of my CAD work. We are supposed to be getting an update sometime soon, but I am not holding my breath ....

 

Good thing, since Mechanical Desktop was discontinued with 2009 and is no longer available.

Autodesk announced in Feb 2002 that MDT would no longer be sold and would only be available for free with Autodesk Inventor. The intention was that MDT users switch over their files to Inventor.

Are you sure you are not really really using AutoCAD Mechanical and not Mechanical Desktop?

 

Might be a good time to learn Inventor.