Reverse Engineering surfaces to solid bodies 2

[MikeH57]

Good afternoon everyone,

I am trying to figure out what the best way to go about reverse engineering scanned data is.
I can get the data in iges files with point clouds or sectioned splines. The other option that I can use is facet bodies.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Long term, facet bodies will probably get you the closet to what you want. NX already has tools to manipulate and edit facet bodies as well as tools to help construct surfaces from them, albeit not in any sort of 'automated' fashion, however we are working on improving this in future versions of NX. Now there is also work being done to support point clouds for some types of workflows, but these are not as focused on actually getting point clouds to be realized as surface as is the work being done for faceted models.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[MikeH57]

John,

I am still new to using surfacing in NX (8.0 is the version I have), how would I use a facet body to create a useable surface?

 

[Rob_N]

Personally I'd take all of the data you can get.

Depending on what sort of licenses you have determines what you can do.

My license allows me to only cut sections in faceted bodies, so my options are limited. I cut sections, clean up the curves, rebuild surfaces and get it as close as i can.
Luckily I don't have to do it often. if its a major change I job it out.

 

[Chigishev]

I have ugopen dll and I can convert stl or obj files into nx solid body. But depends on size of source file. Can you upload any example?

 

[mmauldin]

Maybe this will help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKN5UbykEiQ

 

[MikeH57]

Chigishev: Is 'ugopen dll' just a different liscense that I would need to get? I can't upload the current file I am working with but I can try to get an expample.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Also note that starting with NX 9.0 we enhanced the 'Rough Offset' function to allow you to use a faceted model as the face to be offset. If you set the offset distance to 0.00 and play with the Offset Deviation and Stepover Distance settings you can get a pretty good result. Now it's true that this will work best on nice 'slab' type examples meaning that you can't really use this to make water-tight solid bodies.

Attached below is a video clip showing how the Rough Offset function works using NX 9.0 and selecting a faceted body.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

@MikeH57:
Ugopen is the programming interface to NX. It is a license which allows you to create your own NX programs.
Chigishev has written a program which reads .stl or .obj files and imports / converts the facet data into some form of Solid Body.
I have not seen this program or the result of this program so i cannot say anything more about it.

Regards,
Tomas

 

[MikeH57]

Thanks for the help guys.
I was able to use NX 9.0 yesterday and had some good results using facet bodies.
I used the snip facet tool followed by fit surface to get a small patch of what I was working on. I will have to play with it a little more to get the entire surface I am looking for.

 

[NXsupport]

Hi Chigishev,

Is that ugopen program shareable by you? Can I use it on my system? I have NX8.5 and NX10.

Thanks,

 

[Chigishev]

Send me any your STL example. I will convert it to SolidBody. And after it we can discuss "sharedability" of DLL.

 

[TheeCircle]

Hi John Baker,

In NX 10 there is a reverse engineering application, do you have any insight into the use of this?

Thanks

John Ford

Chigishev I emailed you a while back about your dll application but you never replied.

 

[Chigishev]

No any mail received....
.Com
Gmail
@
Chigishev

 

[JohnRBaker]

I've not used the so-called 'Reverse Engineering' tools for anything much. I only recommend the new (NX 9.0) 'Rough Offset' approach simply because it's easy to use and may be more than adequate for many situations, such when you're not really trying to create a solid body out of a watertight faceted model but rather you're dealing with a slab-type of facet body as I showed in my video clip.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

The reverse engineering tab in NX10 contains mostly features / functions which has "been around" for a while. They have not been in one place before as they are in NX9 and NX10.

Any questions in particular about it ?


Regards,
Tomas

 

[kapmnit123]

Hi Tomas,
Yes with Reverse Engineering Tab the accessibility of RE tools has been made more uniform. I guess the RE tab was incorporated in NX9 itself but there has been some good enhancements also.
For example in FIT SURFACE starting NX10 you can use a COLOR CODED (color coding done using FACET BODY CURVATURE or using DETECT PRIMITIVES) region as a target.
DETECT PRIMITIVES again is a new addition which enables the detection of regular design features (in shape of plane / sphere/cylindrical boss) easily.
PAINT FACET BODY is another one.
Best Regards
Kapil

 

[TheeCircle]

Hi,

John Baker thanks for your reply, I always look forward to reading your responses and always appreciate the videos...a picture is worth a thousand word to me!!!

Tomas I am still very "green" with NX and it's functions so no particular questions just trying to figure out what things do! It is an amazing software.

Thank you

John

 

[JohnRBaker]

As Tomas mentioned, starting with NX 9.0 we've collected all the 'Reverse Engineering' tools onto a single Ribbon 'Tab'. Note that we've done that same thing with the various 'Render' tools as well. This is one of things that we're trying to do with the new Ribbon interface and that is to bring together, using the Tabs, all the tools used during a certain phase of your workflow so as to make it not only easier to find but also to make it easier to see alternatives and secondary tools associated with some task, such as in this case, putting the Reverse Engineering tools together, or the Rendering tools or the various Welding tools. Granted, we could have done this using toolbars, and we did to a certain extent, but now with the Ribbon, we have more ways to present the various sets of tools and even something as simply as being able to have different sized icons or ones with or without text, can help to show which are the 'primary' versus 'secondary' functions and since all of this is full customizable, it's all under the control of the user as to which functions are treated in which way.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[ashivu123]

Hi I am using NX 8.5 let me know how to convert or extract surface or solid from facet body