Filled Sketches Shown In Drawing

[carguy333]

Hello all,

I need help with something I am trying to do in my drawing. I am using Creo 6.0.

Let me start by describing what I am trying to achieve. I have an anodized sheet of aluminum that gets cut and then has an engraving operation done in the middle of the part to show a patterned design, a logo, and text. This is done with a laser which requires a DXF file as an input.

I have the outside geometry defined by the part, which will become a tool path for the laser to cut. In the middle of the part I have a sketch showing an array of rectangles, a sketch showing an elaborate logo, and another sketch with basic text (using Creo font font3d). All of these features need to be filled which I have done except for the text as I cannot get the text to fill. In the part I filled the other two features using the "Fill" feature from the surface menu. These need to be filled because this is how the laser knows to remove the area inside the defining geometry and not just the outline.

The problem I am having has to do with the output file. When I convert my views to "No Hidden" lines the fills disappear and I simply get the outside bounding geometry in my output DXF. None of the fills show up. I have found that I can get the fill to show up in the drawing and the DXF if I use the Sketch>Edit>Hatch/Fill command within the drawing itself. However, this is extremely tedious because I first have to sketch the geometry in the drawing. This is not a viable solution as it will take forever, especially with the logo, and it will not update if I change any of the sketches in the part.

I really feel like there is a solution I just have not come across it yet. Did come across this thread thread554-459548, which is promising unfortunately I am not able to figure out how to fill the sketch as dgallup described other than to use the same "Fill" feature mentioned above. My assumption is there is a different way.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-Mike

 

[dgallup]

I've not used Creo6 so no idea what still works. Did you make a cosmetic feature in the part that references the lines of the features you want to fill? Once you have the cosmetic feature(s) you could hatch or fill them in the drawing in earlier releases.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[carguy333]

Hello dgallup,

Thanks for replying. In the time between my post and your reply I did figure out (with help from others) how to "fill" the sketch in the drawing, but I had to do it a different way then you describe.

For anyone who stumbles upon this thread looking for a solution, one way to fill an area in the drawing is to first create a surface fill in the part. Then in the drawing you can query-click, in a view showing the filled region, until it is highlighted. Once selected the "Hatch/Fill" option becomes available. At this point you will be prompted to enter a name and then you can select the fill option and even select a color. If done correctly, when you output in the DXF format this will show up as a filled region.

I'd still be curious to know how to achieve this using the method you describe because it is always a good idea to have more than one way to get a desired result. Do you recall if there is anything I need to do in the part or drawing in order to be able to select the cosmetic sketch?

-Mike