anybody with part thickness experience?

[nikhiljoglekar]

hi all
I am using solidworks 2001 students edition and doing some custom programming with ray tracing APIs. Solidworks has a ray tracing example posted on their site as "how to measure thickness of the part". However it doesn't work robustly with cylindrical faces. Has anybody tried to use it ever? I am trying to find out thickness of part at various sections and finding out maximum thickness areas as well as thickness variaon and things like that. If anybody is familiar with this kind of work, Please let me know...
regardsNikhil

 

[TheTick]

I don't know anything about ray-tracing, but there may be a possible workaround if revolved surfaces give you trouble.

Export your model to VDA. Reimport this to SW, and do your analysis on that model. The cylinders will be split B-surfaces, and you might be rid of the issues that are causing your troubles.

All this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted.

 

[JNR]

Is this a theoretical excercise (educational) or is it a real-world problem (you said you are using the student edition).

If all you really want to do is look at thickness at sections of cylindrical objects (I am - probably stupidly -assuming circular cylinders) then why not do it with MathCAD or a spreadsheet? API's seem to be a bit of an overkill.

On the other hand if this is a student assignment, well, good luck with it, I hope you can find a way to make it consistent.

BTW: Even using B-splines can be perilous - they are notrioulsy difficult to get to TRUELY conform to conic goemetry (perfect circles, for example). Better check them out before you rely on them.

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