jamami Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 We produce component manufacturing working drawings in 3D using AutoCAD. Sometimes we have to assemble many hundreds of different components to show a customer how a project will look, for example a grandstand with 1000 seats, each on their own chassis and scaffold subframe. The models get really big very quickly and become unmanageable. What we need is a light version of the blocks which ignores all the tube thicknesses and fine detail. Like the boundary command creates a boundary if you click inside an enclosed area is there a command that will put a surface wrap around a 3d model to produce a surface outline? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tzframpton Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 You cannot do this auto-magically with vanilla AutoCAD, but you CAN accomplish this with an AutoCAD vertical product, such as AutoCAD Architecture. You can use "MvBlocks" which have a Low, Medium and High detail setting. This way you can have a simple box as a generic LxWxH mass, then it will automatically swap it with the fully modeled part if you switch it to a High Detail setting. So in the end, if you use vanilla AutoCAD you'd have to duplicate things and use layer control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLW210 Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 Xref the smaller pieces into the one large assembly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadgad Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Xref the smaller pieces into the one large assembly. That's what we do too, even on some pretty big projects. The xrefs help to keep the drawing file size down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Like the boundary command creates a boundary if you click inside an enclosed area is there a command that will put a surface wrap around a 3d model to produce a surface outline? Like Tannar said, no magic bullet. You will need to construct a low-res version of each of your light models. It's the same procedure that's used when building models for game engines. You create a high-res version with all the fine details and then project that detail onto a low-res mesh. You already have the high-res models, so all you need to do now is simplify them. And I'm thinking you could put both models inside a dynamic block with a visibility state toggle so you can switch between the high-res and low-res as needed. If you would like to send me one of your light models, I'll take a look and see what I can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamami Posted May 2, 2015 Author Share Posted May 2, 2015 Tube thickness, mitre details, bolts, rivets, chamfers etc all add to the model size and are unnecessary when doing large scale assemblies . I was hoping I could create something from the outer visible faces only using mechanical but clearly this is not a standard feature. I have imported and simplyfied some parts in Trimble sketch up, have created an assembly with 13000 components and it works brilliantly!!! Render quality is a bit lacking but again not so important for me when viewing the model globally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) Could you post a sample of your model? We need it for considering the easiest way to obtain the surface you want. However I'm thinking about to create a big cube that contains your object, and use command subtract. Then you could separate all negative solids, and after that you could cancel all those inner solids. In that way the main hole inside the cube you've created before, will be a unique external surface of your object (even if negative). After you could explode the cube to obtain surfaces. Or you could still use subtract to get the positive solid. Edited May 14, 2015 by marmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamami Posted May 14, 2015 Author Share Posted May 14, 2015 marmo i like this idea and will have a ply as I am interested to se how it deals with hollow open ended tubes. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danellis Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 Could you post a sample of your model?... Or you could still use subtract to get the positive solid. Would INTERFERE jump straight to this point? dJE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 (edited) Would INTERFERE jump straight to this point? dJE I guess interfere will reproduce the same set of inner solids, so probably it could not be useful in this case. Edited May 14, 2015 by marmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 marmoi like this idea and will have a ply as I am interested to se how it deals with hollow open ended tubes. Thank you You're welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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