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Author Topic: CAD are you interested....  (Read 47452 times)

Fifie

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #100 on: October 29, 2012, 03:01:58 pm »

grendel

That was my first thought
I have the Turbocad file so I will have a look
Fifie
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #101 on: October 29, 2012, 03:07:37 pm »

another thought occurs - is the 2d turbocad file being exported to a 3d cad file, adding the Z information - even if its all 0 could be bloating the filesize. I dont know how much detail is being exported, but generally I find most CAD files are below 5 Mb which is generally accepted as a maximum email size.
Grendel
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #102 on: October 29, 2012, 03:08:16 pm »

Hi chaps! When I said 'larger', I meant that the file size is much larger, not the scale of the drawing! For example, a file that is 8Mb in Turbocad comes out at 100Mb in .dxf format. Sorry for the confusion, David
 
 
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F4TCT

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #103 on: October 29, 2012, 03:15:46 pm »

For my previous things drawn up and waterjetted, Turbocad was used to convert to .dxf and all sent off to Steve at model boat bits.


He did ask me to create an annotation layer with extremes dimensions of each part that required cutting, so maybe he as had similar issues of parts appearing bigger than what was intended.


In my simple mind, a unit of measurement in any cad program is the same!?!? and therefore things shouldn't just get bigger, especially when saved in a very general drawing exchange format. The name suggests its compatible with every cad program....


Dan  {:-{
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F4TCT

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #104 on: October 29, 2012, 03:17:44 pm »

And further to file size, my turbocad created .dxfs are not much larger than the original turbocad file, say 100kb if that...
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Kim

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #105 on: October 29, 2012, 03:37:09 pm »

When saving in a non Auto desk version of .dxf / .dwg it is usually more stable to back save as R12 / R13 but I don’t think turbo cad will allow this only native .dxf / dwg?

Perhaps save as .pdf  most etchers will be able to cope with .pdf
Regards,
Kim
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #106 on: October 29, 2012, 03:46:26 pm »

another thought occurs, one thing that autocad creates huge files for is shading or hatching (a gradient shade is the very worst thing) so you may want to avoid these in any quantity.
one thing I found common in a batch of large files was a block of a tree, on its own it was 1Mb, put 30 or 40 trees in a drawing at various scales and a 30Mb file was easily generated (we had files at over 2Gb a quick edit of the wonderfully detailed 'tree' block to leave it at a few Kb and the files all became a lot more manageable.
Also when you convert a file everything visible and invisible is added to the conversion, sometimes wonders can be performed by purging unwanted data from the source files removing any unused reference files and raster images - all of these can cause the finished dxf to become bloated with unnecessary data. I dont have turboCAD so my advice is from the autocad end having recieved files with many such problems.
Grendel
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #107 on: October 29, 2012, 04:11:29 pm »

These are all very good points, thanks. I don't think there is anything like a picture embedded in the drawing because I copied the individual objects from other drawings where they were created.
 
The bad news is that Turbocad blows up when trying to create a .pdf of it. It creates a 32Mb tmp file and then crashes. It may be that this project is just too complex for it.
 
I've used Turbocad since V2 and have never had a project that has not run into some crippling bug or other. Trouble is, switching to Autocad (or something else) now involves a huge investment of time and money...
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Fifie

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #108 on: October 29, 2012, 04:21:11 pm »

What i am trying at the moment is get the Turbocad file into some format that I can then convert to true autocad format
the Turbocad dwg & dxf files are useless
fifie
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #109 on: October 29, 2012, 04:22:04 pm »

it will be something simple in the turbocad file that when you export to dxf gets exported as a series of points rather than the single entity it is in turbocad. generally dxf is the simplest format, but complex shapes and some of the other complex elements can get simplified and converted to many entities. trust me I have been called on to fix many bloated autocad files in my career as a CAD manager.
Grendel
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #110 on: October 29, 2012, 04:36:44 pm »

"it will be something simple in the turbocad file that when you export to dxf gets exported as a series of points rather than the single entity it is in turbocad."
 
Oh dear! That sounds like most of it! The project consists of numerous small objects, all created from segmented circles, pieces of arcs and so on.
 
I was wondering how they export all those curves, fillets, arcs and so on. Perhaps, as you say, they don't! Here's a .jpg of it:
 
 
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #111 on: October 29, 2012, 04:38:12 pm »

just found this http://www.vectric.com/WebSite/Vectric/support/support_faq.htm if you click on the importing dxf topic it gives a run through of exporting a dxf as a different autocad version (they recommend 12 or 14)...

Quote
Below is an example of how to export a DXF file from TurboCAD Deluxe version 15, in R14 standard.

From the Main menu, select “Save As” and select DXF as the “Save as type” to

“DXF - Drawing eXchange Format”
TurboCAD "Save As" screen

theres a screenshot in here.

To select the standard, click on the “Setup” button.

From the “DXF and DWG Export” form select “AutoCAD R14 Drawing”.
Grendel
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #112 on: October 29, 2012, 04:51:40 pm »

Thanks! That worked OK (Though I have no idea what 'R14' means). It's uploading to my site now (over 100Mb).
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #113 on: October 29, 2012, 04:56:00 pm »

ouch that does seem complex, I presume because its an etch process the fill is necessary, can they work directly from an image format, if Turbocan will let you save the image as a high resolution monochrome .tif format the resulting filesize should be gratifyingly small (in monochrome Tif I have had A0 drawing at a file size of about 500Kb). then comes the scaling problem to specify the output size. how are the parts filled, hatched or shaded, that might make a difference - its worth asking if they need the colours / infill, or just outlines.
Grendel
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Fifie

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #114 on: October 29, 2012, 04:59:13 pm »

There are 31,268 Curves and 576 points in the Turbocad file
No wonder the Dxf file gets so big
Ihave r14 here so send me the file direct David
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #115 on: October 29, 2012, 05:07:34 pm »

I think its the fills that are taking up the majority of the space, most CAD packages wont bloat a file with curves, remember I have handled 2 Gb CAD files that can take 20 minutes to open, patterning and area fills are by far the worst culprits.
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #116 on: October 29, 2012, 05:13:48 pm »

It's on the site now. (Niobe Etch 6 R14)
 
But there's something horribly wrong. I've just downloaded 'Free DWG viewer' from Cnet and it shows that the content of the file is from a completely different project from which the outline template was copied. All this content was deleted and replaced by the new project.

There's no sign of this in the Turbocad original, but that's all that comes through in the .dxf file.
 
Thank you Turbocad.
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Kim

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #117 on: October 29, 2012, 05:30:20 pm »

If it helps i can convert the file for you to a widely accepted format for photo etch.
Regards,
Kim
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #118 on: October 29, 2012, 05:34:32 pm »

ooh it could be the curves, I created a cad file with a simple 9 curve element, copied it about 300 times -  (46Kb) converted it to dxf - (432Kb) a tenfold file size increase, creating fill or patterns doesnt make it much bigger, I guess I was mistaken and that curves do tend to make dxf files much bigger, its the first time I have tried actually testing that.
Grendel
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #119 on: October 29, 2012, 05:41:48 pm »

when you delete in cad it just sets a flag for that element to 'deleted' and hides it, to really delete it you need to purge the unused / unwanted content (this is why you can undo mistakes). in microstation this command is called compress in autocad purge - in turbocad its purge as well - https://docs.imsidesign.com/display/TC18UG/Purge , you get options for the various different things it will allow to be purged, but it will only get rid of stuff thats not used or has been deleted (should get rid of all that deleted stuff).
Grendel
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victorian

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #120 on: October 29, 2012, 06:09:16 pm »

 "you need to purge the unused / unwanted content"
 
Not in Turbocad 16 apparently. No sign of it on the menus or help files.
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #121 on: October 29, 2012, 06:28:08 pm »

ah just had a look at the command set for v16 and you are correct, can you select just the bits you want and 'file - extract to' them to a new clean file, then try converting?
Grendel
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Kim

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #122 on: October 29, 2012, 07:58:21 pm »

Hi, I have had a look at the drawing and can convert easily enough from original or back saved version… that’s the good news I’m afraid…

The drawing itself isn’t good for photo etch as there are overlapping colours & tags missing / not joining.
Pic attached.
I can help but it starts getting costly…

Regards,
Kim
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #123 on: October 29, 2012, 08:53:00 pm »

first observation, there was a sheet file / layout tab with a complete drawing of a loco etch sheet on it, that probably doubled the file size, I am still looking at the remainder.
Grendel
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grendel

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Re: CAD are you interested....
« Reply #124 on: October 29, 2012, 09:19:40 pm »

ok looked at the file - removed the drawing of loco parts on the layout tab 'page 1'-shown below-
then saved as dxf - result 51Mb
zipped the file - result 11Mb - just about emailable.
on the way I purged deleted objects from the file.
Grendel
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