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Assault with a Deadly CAD File (MCAD Modeling Column)
1 Oct, 2008 By: IDSA ,Mike HudspethA few diversionary tactics could help you survive the experience of sharing 3D models.
Are you MENSA material? I'm not. Puzzles irritate me. My wife loves to sit for hours figuring them out. I throw puzzles against the wall and go find something more fun to do. I guess I'm not the "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" type. Actually, I'm the type who uses the computer-game cheat books. I don't play games for the intellectual stimulation; I play them for fun.
It's interesting then that I chose to go into 3D modeling. How so? Let me ask you, How often have you had to use someone else's model and you felt as if you were taking a MENSA test? You can't do this, you can't do that. The model explodes. Does that sound familiar? Just about anyone who deals with 3D models has problems from time to time. It's not their fault (usually). It's just that using models from who-knows-where can be challenging.
No one has it in for you. When you get a model from someone, he or she usually doesn't intend to cause problems. But unless everyone does everything exactly the same way, variation will be commonplace. Until the 3D modeling police make people do things the so-called right way, people are going to do their own thing. It's human nature.
I used to work with a bunch of modelers (who shall remain anonymous) who learned to do their jobs piecemeal. Our company was too cheap to send them to training, so they had to pick the brains of those who were lucky enough to have gone. They ended up learning just enough to get their jobs done. They were totally oblivious to the full capabilities of the 3D modeling software. Consequently, whenever a problem occurred with a model, you could bet your bottom dollar it was one of theirs. One engineer in particular was notorious for having models no one wanted to touch. Every time we imported or opened his files (and I do mean every time), they had problems, (You only have to get the blue screen o' death once or twice before you figure out someone's not doing something right.) Unfortunately, our deadlines didn't allow us to remodel, so we worked with what we had.
Lost in Translation
If you have to translate 3D CAD files from one file format to another, you're probably no stranger to problematic models. CAD file translators today have come a long way and are fairly bulletproof, but not always perfect. Again, the process is hampered by the human desire to do things our own way. If you take a part to five toolmakers and ask each to design a tool to make the part, you are likely to get five different solutions. It's the same with 3D CAD software programmers. Each 3D modeling program is different from the next, which means you probably can't move a model from one to the other without losing something in the translation. In the old days, this problem was even bigger. Many developers would make it difficult to export models to another format because they feared easy file translation might lead to lost business. (What was Genghis Khan's old saying? "It's not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.") So translation issues weren't just intentional, sometimes they were economical.
 Figure 1. Many manufacturers of off-the-shelf parts offer 3D models you can incorporate into your CAD assembly. |
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