Robface translation from FIDES.

[Borgius]

Good afternoon,

this is my first topic on this forum, and I hope you could help me!

I have some surface parts designed in FIDES. This software allows to translate these parts into .rf files by just a few clicks... So great. However, the .rf output file is really HUGE and unfortunatelly RobCAD can not handle them :S. I am including a snapshot of "robface output options" in FIDES.

So, is there any way to enlight these .rf files and make easier to work with them in RobCAD?

I am not sure, but maybe I should have written this topic on a FIDES forum... my apologies then.

Thank you for your kind attention.
Best regards.

[simspec]

set sheet conversion to ply instead of exact.
set optimization to no

could you translate out only a few groups and post the rf file?

i know some other tricks that might help but i need to see the rf file.

[Borgius]

Thank you for your quick answer simspec! Very kind of you.

I am afraid I can not post here any file due to privacy policy... but 99% of our parts are just surfaces, with no kinematics, no weld points...

It would be great if you could tell me those tricks!

Thank you in advance.

[simspec]

this is the same block exported from fides in a few different ways, which one does your robface file look like?

[Borgius]

Thank's again simspec!

I really don't mind if the surfaces are made of facets, as poly or exact. Most important for me is its "weight" in my hard drive.

Taking a look to your examples, it seems that if I do the rf file as a poly, is lighter than an exact conversion, isn't it? Any other recomendation?

Kind regards

[Ynze]

You definitively do not want facets in your cell. There is not one good reason to want them and there are thousands to get rid of them.

We found that there is not a huge difference between exact and poly. So that's a matter of taste.
What we've found with translations from fides is that you get these kind of hybrid solids it looks like a surface model with missing surfaces but acts as if it is a one piece solid.  It is very funny that if you choose for optimization it gets worse. Optimization off solved most of this.
 

[simspec]

hi ynze, the aim of the zip file was to determine how his parts were translating out of fides not to suggest the best one.

I prefer polygons as I have had some odd results with exact.

For ref. most of the "weight" of a *.co is related to colour, visibility, transparency information for each entity.

So if you have three versions of a component *.co one that is made up of 50 polygons another that is made of 500 facets or one that is made of 50 surfaces the facet version will be the heaviest.

However there is a trick that can be done with the facet version, which is to modify the facet *.rf file slightly, with this modification you get much "lighter" *.co components. (i think the last time i used the script i got a roof down from 56MB (polygons) to 17MB , which makes quite a difference when applied to a whole vehicle)

[Borgius]

Simspec, that's exactly what I need!!!
Could you tell me how should I modify the .rf file to enlight it that way!!??

Thank you so much!

[simspec]

i had a look at the script results and it is more than a slight modification to the rf file, you have to modify each facet  (which means thousands and thousands of modifications to each rf file), which is too much to do by hand and i cant share the script with you.

[Ynze]

Well one of the other issues with facets is that in the cell it might be hard working with them. E.g. sometimes when you get third party information in an iges file or something like that the equipment is translated in to facets. Then try to make it kinematic or something like that. I tend to remodel.

I think that part of the result that yoy get from fides is also determined by the way your designers work.

[simspec]

The script converts all the thousands of facets into a single entity, this is how the co becomes lighter, in fact ynze i think i used an early version of the script on some pins the last time i worked with your guys. for kinematics you just separate the facets out into a co for each link, covert each component into a single entity and then recombine the link co's contents into a single component co.

[Borgius]

Simspec, I understand that you are not able to share that script with me. But could you just tell me what should be modified in just one facet? I can create a script by myself.

Thank you.