Adobe Illustrator to NX

[Dave K]

NX 5

I have some b/w scans, that I'm trying to export from Adobe Illustrator 10 as dxf or cgm, so I can import them into NX5. So far, all I get in NX5 is nothingness. I'm completely Illustrator challanged, but I have done this with a pdf in the past (months ago).

Does anyone have any clue how to do this?

Thanks,


-Dave
Everything should be designed as simple as possible, but not simpler.

 

[hudson888]

Sometimes the lines come out black against a black background. Try changing the background or do a fit then select all and change the colour to something you can see. Even by doing the fit and select all you should know whether there are entities in the file.

If you haven't used DXF with NX-5 before you may need to check the defaults and get it working. In that regard my advice would be to check that the outputs from Adobe actually contain something by re-importing them to Adobe. Then Check that NX can both import and export CGM or DXF in the same way. Then if you have changed anything re-try importing the output from Adobe.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[DavidTolsma]

Try Tiff

-Dave Tolsma
Tolsnet LLC

http://groups.google.com/group/NX_CAX/

http://groups.google.com/group/plm-exchange/

 

[hudson888]

David,

Since when can you import Tiff? I know you can set it as a background and trace over it, but I have never seen it imported to create geometry. That is to say rasterised to lines and arcs.

regards

Hudson

 

[DavidTolsma]

Gunman,

what is your goal? Import it then what?

-Dave Tolsma

http://Tolsnet.com/jobs

http://groups.google.com/group/NX_CAX/

http://groups.google.com/group/plm-exchange/

 

[Dave K]

Goal is/was to import it into NX, scale it back to full size, and then use it as reference.

In this case, the info was simple enough that I just recreated it in NX. Other times, we can get pdf documents with full car profiles, that we'd like to scale up, and use for reference. Once in awhile I get the Illustrator conversion to work, but most of the time I end up using WinTopo. It works, but the lines/curves are not as clean as I would like.

Thanks

-Dave
Everything should be designed as simple as possible, but not simpler.

 

[hudson888]

Dave,

For bringing in styling sketches and front, plan or side profiles of vehicles. We have used illustrator with DXF and still had to scale it afterward.

NX has a surface studio or visual studio licence which I think are more or less part of the same thing to the extent that it is included in our licenses and I'm not sure whether there are actually two products sold separately. Anyway the visual part allows you to bring in tiff as a background and trace over it, which is more or less the recommended method for doing that kind of work. If you want to model those vehicles then you're likely to benefit greatly from having studio surfacing tools as well because the ordinary surfacing package isn't geared to quite the degree of freedom to work in 3D space without so much construction geometry.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[Dave K]

This isn't so much for styling sketches, but for reference body outlines. We have a seat of the Studio bundle, so I could bring in a tiff, and trace it, but I'd prefer to just import, scale, and be done with it.

Just as an example, we've done a race car chassis layouts, and we put the 2d body outline on for reference, ie Mazda RX8, and BMW M6.

-Dave
Everything should be designed as simple as possible, but not simpler.

 

[hudson888]

Well you should have a choice of either. I don't know why the importing option doesn't work for you since it works for me.

A couple of ideas maybe...! Assuming you have no error messages to report on importing the data and that the exported DXF file or cgm actually contains some data then you should logically have some extra entities added to your NX file as a result. Perhaps they're just difficult to find. Start with a clean file and then perform the importation of DXF then look under Format>Layers>Information at the listing for some entities on any layer, surely there might be some.

Do as I suggested earlier create some simple geometry in NX export it to DXF and then import the results to a clean file. Prove first that DXF into NX is set up properly and working.

Let us know the results.

Best Regards

Hudson

 

[Dave K]

I'm pretty sure Illustrator isn't outputting anything that NX can understand. If I convert the file to dxf using WinTopo, I can import it, the lines/curves are just very low quality.

Thanks

-Dave
Everything should be designed as simple as possible, but not simpler.

 

[Xwheelguy]

Dave,

You might looking into making sure the Illustrator objects are vector rather than raster prior to exporting to DXF. I know Illustrator will work with either type of object rather seamlessly.

Your first post mentioned that you were initially working with scans (scanned images I assume rather than scanned geometry of some type). If my assumption is correct, then the image may need to be vectorized in Illustrator prior to exporting as DXF.

I'm not an Illustrator expert, so I'm not sure if I'm even on the right path or not....but it's where I'd start if it were me....making sure that I'm outputting a valid DXF file that NX can handle.

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

Some people are like slinkies....they don't really have a purpose, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

 

[hudson888]

Dave,

Tim could be right I don't have enough in front of me to check it 100% but it pricks my memory as to some of the settings we used in Adobe illustrator. In a choice between Vector and Raster pick Vector every time. Look for places where you can change those settings in order to get a better result.

Cheers

Hudson

 

[Dave K]

Tim, Hudson,

Thanks, I'll have to take a look at that.

And Tim, you are correct, in this most recent case I was working with some (scanned) jpeg images. In the past I've tried this with pdf's too.

-Dave

-Dave
Everything should be designed as simple as possible, but not simpler.