Exploded hidden line

[turbo2omni]

I need to take a customer drawing and send it to our laser software and have it "plot" just as it appears in AutoCad. The problem is that our laser software won't recognize Hidden, Center, Dashed lines Ect.

Is there a way to explode a center line so that it will appear as three lines so that our software won't draw one solid line where a center or hidden line was suposed to live.

 

[cfee]

Tell me a little about your "Laser Software". A few particulars you deal with frequently should be enough.
Tell me about the output device, etc.

 

[turbo2omni]

Our software is able to take DWG's, DXF's .AI, .PCX, and a few other file types.

We are currently using AutoCad 2000.

The Laser System will only accept R14 formated DWG's it imports them and in the importation process reads polylines, lines, and hatching patterns. It will read a couple other autocad enties. upon importation it takes the autocad entities and makes them into its own file type (.MCL) it uses a VBS style program with a (.bia) format to give the "MCL" size location, Laser Power/ speed ect. The Mcl's are only editable in autocad. In other words it is a uneditable format, other than scale and position in my marking field.

Is that the info you needed. I am willing to share more if needed. just don't want to waste bandwidth.


What I am lookin' for is some little hidden command to explode a hidden line into a series of short lines. That way there is no way the other program can screw it up.

I also tried the same experiment. I imported a DXF file in CorelDraw 8 and it did the same thing. Replaced a center line with one solid line.

 

[IFRs]

You can't explode a hidden line in Autocad, because the "hidden" part of it is simply an attribute of the vector. The line is not multiple short dashes. You can try to change the LTSCALE to make the dashes and spaces larger. Can you try that?

 

[turbo2omni]

That is kinda what I was afraid someone would say. Changing the LTscale seems to have no affect on the line in the MCL format.

my current solution is a set of lines I use to "trace" over the existing hidden lines in the Customer drawing. It works but seems so elemetary to me. There just has to be a better way, since these drawings are coming in more and more often.

 

[smcadman]

Do you even use this centerline/hidden line? Do you cut this line? Before we send our .dwg's to our waterjet, we erase all lines that are not needed, put everything on layer 0, and turn all cut-outs, etc. into closed polylines. We save this file as another name, and name it so we know it is for waterjet/laser only. We purge everything else so the only thing in the file is what is being cut, and some text for labels (material type, gauge, quantity required)

Flores

 

[Hayden]

I used to have a similar problem. Our laser could take bitmaps as well though. So what I ended up doing was creating a JPG and using that. The image did look a little different, although no worse or better.
Of course this could be academic if you can't accept bitmaps.

Good luck

 

[exit]

Hi Turbo ,
there's a way:
Try *.dxb file.
-> new plotter (dxb-file)
-> plot into a folder
Import back into Your *.dwg by "dxbin"

Use the keyword search (dxb) in this forum...
Lothar


Win NT4.0(SP6),2000(SP3)
AC 2000i(SP2), ADT 3.0(SP3),
AC 2002, ADT 3.3,
AC 2004, ADT 2004

 

[turbo2omni]

Well I didn't quite figure out the Dxb deal yet, but I will. I did find out that exporting a WMF file will do just what I need it to. I messes around with the scale of the drawing just a little... but I'll take it.


And yes I need the hidden lines, I am engraving an anodized Aluminuim plate with mold schematics, to be permantly stuck to the mold.

Our software will take raster images in a couple formats but we try to only use it for pictures and artistic work, and such b/c the quailty just never seems the same.

 

[IFRs]

I fyou are using wmf, I can recomend an inexpensive addon to Autocad that helps a lot with wmfs -

http://www.furix.com/index.htm?PB

 

[OZZY84]

if you have acad 14 also, less steps,
file -> printer setup -> new
highlight "AutoCad DXB file format" -> ok
follow prompts.
then print using the new DXB printer, output will be a file,
new drawing, "DXBIN" @ command line, browse to new DXB file,
copy objects to clipboard, open original drawing,
paste as block, then "align" block using common points on line, you can take it from here.
many steps, probably depends on how many objects are "broken linetypes", whether it is worthwhile.

hope this helps

Intel P4 1.7 GHZ
768 RDRAM
Win 2000 Pro
Autocad 14, 2002 with EP 2.3.1