IGES Import Tips

[Chris Lohman]

IGES is an industry standard that we all contend with and is one that often requires a great deal of tweaking for data to move from one application to another.

 

If you have any experience with iges and tweaks in *ANY* cad applications that make it easier to work with IronCAD, please let us know.

 

Here are some IGES tips for importing into IronCAD that I know:

 

1) Before importing, insure your default Kernel in Tools/Options/"Parts" is set to Parasolid.

2) Many applications function at a very low accuracy and this could result in overlapping or "loose" surfaces. To combat this, try setting your Dimension Precision -before- importing to 1. After importing change it back to whatever you want. This is in Tools/Options/"General". Not the dimension "display" precision, but the second box that is labeled Dimension Precision.

3) When importing the file, the following options seem to typically result in the best chance of the iges file importing.

One thing to note with these options is, even if the geometry is unusuable by IronCAD, it will still import it. After importing you will have to manually convert it to a solid (select part, shape menu, convert to solid option). By attempting to convert to solid upon import however if IronCAD is unable to convert it, it will simply abort the import. If you wait to do it manually after it has imported, you can at least see that *something* imported, it just won't convert.

 

Hopefully this will help someone. If anyone else knows any other tips, such as, what settings to use in ProE so that IronCAD can import the data, or what options to choose in Rhino while importing an IGES from IronCAD, please let us know.

 

Oh one more note. Since IronCAD is still a Solid Modeler, you will experience more issues with IGES when working with "surface" entites in IGES. Whenever possible, try to export/import as IGES Solid instead of Trimmed Surfaces