I’m inquiring about the capabilities of your CAD .NET API toolset. We are looking for a tool that will allow us to parse and retrieve information out of part CAD files, specifically DXF and STEP(STP) for now, for subsequent processing by applications we have developed. These are all files containing a single part which we manufacture for our customers. I understand your API has the ability to convert these file types, but I’m curious if you’re able to mine the data out of them.
For example:
- Width of largest face
- Length of largest face
- Surface area (largest face flattened if part has bends)
- Thickness
- Perimeter of largest face
- Part faces (i.e. hole count & sizes)
- Total count
- Are any holes tapped (i.e. threaded)
- Size
- Is the part a tube/cylinder
- Has chamfers (if any face is a chamfer)
- Has bends
I know some of this information is only available depending on file types (3D vs 2D) and some are calculated values.
Is your CAD API toolset or another of your tools capable of or obtaining this information?
@jnordell,
Hello.
I’m afraid it is compex to answer exactly.
Commonly it depends on the format. If the required data are stored in the file, we will load and show them too. For example, for the DXF/DWG the majourity of such data are calculated inside the software and are not stored in the file. We have some basic functions to do area/length measurements for this format, but not for all entities. It seems some of the values you need can be calculated after loading the file with Aspose.CAD and iterating over its content applying some geometry/math. We can provide more information on this if you can share some sample files and specify what values you need from them, so we will check how they are stored/calculated.
Sampling_1.zip (98.9 KB)
Attached is a sample file zip file containing a couple STP files and the data we mine from them.
@jnordell,
Hi,
please give us some days to evaluate the feasibility of this, I will come back with more information.
It’s been a couple weeks. Any update?
@jnordell,
Hello.
We are sorry for the delay with the answer, we have looked at this issue in the scope of CADNET-9804.
Unfortunately, we can not neither read nor calculate such values from the file structure at the moment. STP file contains the tree of small parts of the drawing (like points, vectors, lines, directions etc.) but not the common information of the entire part. We are going to investigate the implementation of this opportunity further, it could be helpful if you can share the name of software you use to see these values.
We are currently using the SolidWorks API to obtain the raw elements (i.e. bodies, faces, edges, etc.) and then based on that data run it through routines to calculate some of other values.
@jnordell,
could you please share the example of such routine, so we can get the idea which objects of STEP file are processed?
Based on how this conversation is going I’m just going to assume your product can’t do what I’m looking for. Thank you.
@jnordell,
thank you for all the details provided, this is valuable and helpful for us.