Solid Profile Operations on XREF's

[slayer913]

Hello all -

I've already searched through the forums, and didn't see anything leading towards what I'm about to ask. I'm looking for a way to Solprof an xref, which would in turn contain other xrefs. If there is no way to do this, hopefully some people can help me spearhead a programming effort to do such a thing.

Here's an example:

Dwg 1: A Butterfly Valve 3D solid
-Insert this into-
Dwg 2: A 3D Skid assembly, which has 100 other blocks in it total
-Xref this into-
Dwg 3: A 3D Process System installation, which has 3 xref skids

So, Dwg 3 now contains 3 xref skids, which each contain numerous blocks of parts and equipment.

Goal: For example, complete a layout view of this assembly for dimensional and visualization purposes. Solprof this top view to show pipe runs and other equipment below the top layer of solids.

So essentially, each component is built of solid models, as there are no wireframe or 2D entities used in these assembly. Somehow, I have to get ACAD to recognize all solid assemblies and produce their profiles, regardless of block/xref association.

Any help would be appreciated!

Albert

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

Seeing as AutoCAD's Solid Modelling capabilities haven't been improved / updated for quite sometime (understatement of the year), check out the following Technical Document on the Autodesk web site under the Knowledge Base section -

ID: TS69593 - Cannot use SOLDRAW and SOLPROF commands on blocks and xrefs (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2865770&linkID=2475323)

Please note I believe the above still applies to AutoCAD 2005, until the 25th February I won't be able to test it (don't have access to AutoCAD 2005 until then).

Have a good one, Mike

[jaberwok]

Try the Dview/Clip combination. Not too easy to get just what you want but it does work on blocks, xrefs and even custom objects from 3rd party software. You can use 3dorbit first to quickly get close to the correct clipping plane then adjust with Dview/POints.

[tom.seagro]

Hmm. Personally I wonder if they have yet to come up with a solution to this situation even in 2009. The only work around I have found so far is to cheat. What I have had to do is print a DXB version of what I want, and then open a new drawing and bring it back in as a binary file. Not only is it terribly "clunky", it causes quite a few painful issues. If you decide to try this watch for these problems.

1. The outputed objects will be scaled exactly to the output plotting. So be prepared to re-scale them to true scale.

2. Every entity will be converted to fundamentally to lines, so I would avoid text like the plague.

3. Yes, sadly circles and arcs will become lines as well.

4. Avoid shaded surfaces.

5. How you plot your 3d Object, (viewport plotting), will be a factor in the output display.

Like I already said, its a last ditch effort solution. But this will also work on blocks, xrefs, and surface models, and line objects.