Irene:
With out knowing the boolean operations that that Bill did to achieve
the 5 sided nut in question its difficult to know where the fault lies.
I see this more as a operator error instead of a program error.
I have used formZ to make stl files and have never had a file that went
to a RP service bureau that was unable to be used with no changes except
to develop the supports.
Doing a 5 sided nut results from the Bill defining his nut as being 5
sided. No program is going to correct the operator forming the incorrect
shape.
As for the strange stuff with the nut threads, I suspect that this is
part of a known bug with formZ and forming radii. Again I suspect that
when the nut was formed by formZ it saw the model as being a solid
although it had overlapping surfaces. Gaps and overlaps are one of the
biggest problems with all 3-D modelers. None of them are able to
eliminate the problem 100% and virtually all of them will pass bad data
down the line. Pro-E is well know for overlapping and underlapping
surfaces, missed vertices, and other problems that it does not catch and
will pass on to "valid" stl files.
As a solid modeler instead of a surface modler, FormZ almost always
catches problems when the math does not allow it to make solids in
certain operations.
Question to you. Did Bill's file validate as a good STL file even though
it does have the center filled?
I for one would be willing to look at Bill's original file to find out
where the problem occured.
I do agree that CAD packages should be bullet proof when transfering
data. Unfortunately that day has not come.
Niel Leon - CDS,inc.
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:46:48 EEST