Analyze TWO sections of ONE part separately -- Too fancy?!

Hello,
I have a part in Pro/E and I want to make a cut in it using a plane
(or some surface with a curved shape if possible- but this one is not
as important), and then save the two pieces on the two sides of this
plane as two separate parts, or at least be able to do some analysis
on them SEPARATELY such as obtaining their center of mass, principal
axes of inertia, mass, etc. May be there is a better way for doing
this than actually inserting a cut and then carrying out the rest of
the stuff on the two newly created objects. But I am not very good
with Pro/E and any help would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, and I have to mention that I didn't make this part in Pro/E so I
don't have a drawing for it. I just have the imported file in STL
format and I need to do some analysis on it.

I also have a very simple problem to begin with, and that is that
under Insert menu, I can not see a 'cut' option, if I wanted to pursue
my own idea!

Thank you in advance for reading this and taking the time to your
respond.

Lilly

 

Hello,
I have a part in Pro/E and I want to make a cut in it using a plane
(or some surface with a curved shape if possible- but this one is not
as important), and then save the two pieces on the two sides of this
plane as two separate parts, or at least be able to do some analysis
on them SEPARATELY such as obtaining their center of mass, principal
axes of inertia, mass, etc. May be there is a better way for doing
this than actually inserting a cut and then carrying out the rest of
the stuff on the two newly created objects. But I am not very good
with Pro/E and any help would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, and I have to mention that I didn't make this part in Pro/E so I
don't have a drawing for it. I just have the imported file in STL
format and I need to do some analysis on it.

I also have a very simple problem to begin with, and that is that
under Insert menu, I can not see a 'cut' option, if I wanted to pursue
my own idea!

Thank you in advance for reading this and taking the time to your
respond.

Lilly

Well, you said the magic word (black magic, that is) ~ STL. This is a faceted solid, the worst of all the solids formats to work with. Anything would be better: IGES, STEP, SET, SAT, NEU or any of those that represent the proprietary formats of ACIS, Parasolid or Granite. I'm not even sure what it is about the faceted solid that makes it so difficult to work with, but only very specialized (inside of Pro/e) modules let you do anything with them; one of them is REX (Reverse Engineering eXtension). This makes it possible to create more conventional surfaces/solids from faceted solids like STL. Sorry, but I just can't remember doing anything useful with or to an STL file. And, unless you're doing stereo lithographic RP models, there's absolutely no reason for you to get such a model. Any solids modeling program can export in numerous formats. But, if it's completely impossible to get the vendor to send you the file in a useable format, look online for an STL2IGES or STL2STEP translator.

But, when you get a useable model, your original approach should work. It is the Master Model approach and its use is quite common, just as you described it: using surface or plane, cut to the right, "save as" Left_half; cut to the left, "save as"Right_half", and assign mass props to each, as if it were an independent part, because it is. This is a common method of making parted plastic parts, then building the mating, interlocking features, like lips and bosses.

David Janes

 

Hi, do you know of a free translator by any chance? (or an inexpensive
one)