Wildfire dxf file generation?

I need to take a .asm file created in Pro/E Wildfire and create a .dxf
file of a specific view of the assembly, so I can then work with it in
2D AutoCAD 14. My Pro/E 2000 friends at work are pretty sure they can
do this (I started asking into this question about 1 minute before
everybody was headed home for the weekend; bear with me!) by simply
going to File>Save As> and save the file as a .dxf file. I don't seem
to be seeing this file type as an option in Wildfire. Am I going
blind, or...? Any suggestions would be appreciated, thank you--
C. Hale
Lafayette, CO

 

"Save as Copy"

 

(I just canceled my reply because I assumed you have a DRW of the ASM?)

Anyhow, if you want to save the ASM out as a 2D DXF, you will have to
create a DRW of your ASM, then you can Save as Copy, DXF.
Otherwise, if you want to save out your ASM as 3D solids, Save as Copy,
ACIS (*.sat)

...

 

: I need to take a .asm file created in Pro/E Wildfire and create a .dxf
: file of a specific view of the assembly, so I can then work with it in
: 2D AutoCAD 14. My Pro/E 2000 friends at work are pretty sure they can
: do this (I started asking into this question about 1 minute before
: everybody was headed home for the weekend; bear with me!) by simply
: going to File>Save As> and save the file as a .dxf file. I don't seem
: to be seeing this file type as an option in Wildfire. Am I going
: blind, or...? Any suggestions would be appreciated, thank you--

You've simply gone 'module' blind. Isn't dxf capable of representing 3D data, so
that 3D AutoCAD can import it. If you need, as you say, 2D data, you need to
export it from a 2D format. The only such thing in Pro/e is drawing mode. If you
place an assembly view on a sheet of a drawing and export it to dxf, you should
get the 2D data you need for ACAD.
[rant, RAYOR]
Gosh, this 3D to 2D to 3D crap is hard!!! In 7-10 years, there will be no 2D
anywhere, Dead Man Walking... All you 2D curmudgeons, get over to 3D, or you'll be
like that one lone board drafter at Caterpillar who loved his drafting board so
much that he got it as a retirement present and still gets the occasional paper
drawing to correct. Like the steam boiler railroad guys, who when their ranks
thinned out, got to man the train museums. Great, for those of you who need a
hobby, but certainly not as a way to make a living or run a corporation. The
technology's moving very quickly ~ spend some money, you American capitalist
cheapskates and try to keep up!! Or, hey, why not just send the money to someplace
like India and buy the already highly sophisticated talent, trained in a place
where they kept up, where they didn't go cheap on the training, like they did here
in the 80s and 90s. Here, where even the 'bedrock' community college system
withers. Which is the only thing left after they trashed all the apprenticeship
programs. So, now we have highly trained intellectuals and theoreticians who can't
DO anything, can't MAKE or BUILD anything and we have to get talent from India and
China where they still follow the European model of first leaning to do and make
and build, so that they know what the theory applies to. Bet they don't have to
wrangle with a bunch of decripit 2D drafters in India!

David Janes

 

David Janes wrote:

I don't know anything about India, but China is nothing
like you think it is .....

 

I've <got> it!, thanks much to you all for the necessary info to get
me off the ground on this topic. More in a minute. But first,...

Oh man, David Janes, your "rant" cuts me to the core of my being, I am
forced to admit. I am indeed a 2D curmudgeon, but I feel compelled to
elaborate. (by the way, I enjoyed the total crap out of your response
and read it out loud to my wife a while ago. She wondered "how long
it took the guy to write that" and I told her, heck, probably about 5
minutes; I write stuff like that all the time myself!!

I'm just starting to learn Wildfire (duh). I've some time ago
completely thrown up my hands at Pro/E 2000, which is the primary
platform that the serious ME Dept. guys use at my company. They got
hold of a copy of Wildfire and told me, "here Charley, this is
supposed to be a lot more friendly and bone-headed, knock yourself
out". (they, in turn, are currently shaking in their boots at the
prospect of shifting entirely to Wildfire in the coming years. ha!!).
I'm 16+ years into a career at a laser/laser radar R&D company that
had ~ 8 people when I started in 1987, and is now sitting at about 215
people. When I started in '87, I was one of three guys (one PhD
physicist and two BS physics geeks, me being one of them) who "did it
all", including mechanical (that's manual) drafting of any and all
widgets and (mostly fairly modest back then) assemblies necessary to
do our earliest of early R&D and prototyping. A couple years later, I
was the first person at the co. to bring in a copy of ACAD9, I think
it was, then 10 for a number of years. Soon the core of the design
guys, still no "real MEs" yet, were doing everything in ACAD10, 2D. I
got REALLY good at it, by the way; still had a lot of design work to
do back then, etc. Then we really started growing and hired a real ME
or two, who got us going with 3D non-parametric ACAD10 and then Pro/E.
I was later the first guy to get hold of a copy of SolidWorks, which
lots of R&D guys snagged onto, me included. But as the co. grew, my
level of responsibility for real "in the trenches" mech and optomech
design waned as I became more of a "systems engineer" (my life at the
co. has been comprised of being a "fake" engineer of one sort or
another, until we grow enough to hire some real ones! I'll let the
reader conclude that that says about me, I'm frankly not sure...).
Thus, I've never really been on the hook for an end-to-end instrument
design in the 3D world to date, and predictably enough I've found
myself too busy and/or lazy to sit down after hours and pound out some
decent expertise. But anyhow, I still need, and very definitely want
and love, to continue to have my hand in the hardw design of the
things we do, and am using my rudimentary Wildfire skills to permit me
to navigate around in the design guys' monstrous Pro/E2002 assembly
files. As you so adroitly picked up on, I'm often inclined to get
hold of dxf files of the assemblies and fire up ACAD14 (I've got
2000/2, too, but just don't like them as much as 14--is THAT
curmudgeonly for you or what?!? and go in and REALLY QUICKLY design
in new stuff that I then hand over to the ME's again, who sigh and
moan and design it on into the real model...so that's my CAD story in
a nutshell. This weekend for whatever reason, I've decided I need to
figure out how to make my own damn dxf's instead of hassling my poor
MEs. I'm a Dead Man Walking all right (that's good, really good),
but, I'm holing up in the prison law library and trying to get my case
re-tried...seriously!

Your comments about loss of training and skills at the community
college level and such are right-on, and I have very similar
sentiments, believe me. I'm a serious-level home machinist in my
off-time (two lathes, one of them a magnificent 1947 Hardinge toolroom
lathe, two mills, surface grinder, etc.). I have family connections
to such manic activities, but, I also decided a long time ago that I
wasn't going to be able to design anything worth a shit if I didn't
actually know how to <make> it; and so it goes. I find myself pretty
aghast at how little of that sort of experience incoming MEs can
arrive with fresh from school; I know plenty of ME youngsters who <do>
know their stuff very well too, no problem, but it seems it always
took specific initiative on their parts to seek out that machining
experience and the necessary hands-on foundation to really design
well.

So all that said (you guys who really belong here are well into "who
the HELL is this yahoo anyhow??!", I do appreciate--ha),

Should any other Wildfire neophytes and/or 2D curmudgeons find their
way to this message, I herewith provide my recipe for obtaining the
damnable dxf in damnable ACAD14:

In .asm file,
Reorient View menu; Saved Views; Name: "test", say; Set; Save; OK.
File: New: Drawing; "test.drw", say.
"Empty with Format"; Browse; c.frm (e.g.); OK.
"Insert Drawing View"; Done; click a center point in the drawing area;
Select "test" Saved View; Set; OK.
Save As: "test.dxf" (praises be)
Open damnable ACAD14 and do the dirty deed.

Cheers,
Charley Hale
Lafayette CO

 

By the way, that was ACAD12 for the 3D wireframe stuff way back when,
not 10, for all you ACAD history wonks out there. OK, now I'm done,
have a good weekend--C. Hale