Extrusion along path not working...

Hi folks,

the file attached has some closed shapes and a path.  The aim is to extrude them along the path but I keep getting the following error message in the message centre...

Elements are not within Solid Working Area.

If Im honest Im not sure what the Solid Working Are is...

Thanks in advance for any help

SWA.dgn
  • Unknown said:
    I'm not sure what the Solid Working Are is

    A CAD system that defines coordinates using floating-point numbers suffers a loss of precision the further you stray from the centre of that system.  Most CAD tools these days, including MicroStation, use floating-point numbers to define coordinates.  The Solids Working Area (SWA) is the design cube inside which the coordinate's floating-point precision is sufficient to guarantee correct creation and manipulation of solid objects.

    Look up Solids Working Area (note spelling) in MicroStation help.

    In MicroStation, you can see the current SWA in Design File Settings | Working Units dialog.

     
    Regards, Jon Summers
    LA Solutions

  • Hi Jon,

    thanks!  That makes sense.  My SWA is currently set to 4.294967 Km.  does that mean that becasue if I want to create a features-based solid or Smart solid it has to be within 4.294967 Km of the origin in both directions of each axis.  Thes limits define the design cube?  The problem is that the object we're trying to create is geo-referenced which is why its so far away from the origin.

    I already tested moving everything to 0,0,0 and it still didnt work.

    Just tried increasing my SWA to 100Km and it still gave me the same error...

  • Unknown said:
    My SWA is currently set to 4.294967 Km.  does that mean that becasue if I want to create a features-based solid or Smart solid it has to be within 4.294967 Km of the origin in both directions of each axis.

    No, it just means that the geometry itself needs to be smaller than ~4 km. In general it's a good practice to model near 0,0,0 and define a global origin/use coincident world attachments to locate geometry in it's real world coordinates in order to avoid floating point errors due to very large design coordinates...but it is not necessary to be within an SWA sized area around the origin in order to do solid modeling.

    Unknown said:
    I already tested moving everything to 0,0,0 and it still didnt work. Just tried increasing my SWA to 100Km and it still gave me the same error.

    In this case the error message is misleading, your path is ~78 m, so the geometry size is fine. The SWA size you are using is the default for V7, if you don't have a need to Save As V7, I'd change your seed files to use a 1 km SWA.

    The real problem here is your profiles. The green complex shape is badly non-planar, when trying to create a sheet body we'll try to flatten using the average normal...but when something is this non-planar that won't be correct. If you intended this to be planar you can use tools->curves->modify curves->flatten curve to flatten to the drawing YZ plane...otherwise you'll need to create this geometry as a trimmed surface.

    Even after flattening, I still have trouble with sweeping this profile along your path. The path itself has lots of vertices, and the solid kernel is no doubt having trouble with one of the mitered intersections...could be a very short segment, etc. where it would cause a self-intersection...I didn't really look too closely.

    -B



  • Abe

    As Jon and Brien correctly said (SWA, non planar profile, bad path, overlapping solid etc etc ).

    Anyway, just for the record...I've performed some fundamental changes to that path - see text inside file (having no idea what this thing is I've (de)scaled the whole geometry > rescale it if required).

    Good news: see file attached

    Bad news: MS takes ages to extrude a thing along some geometry (have a triple espresso whilst waiting) .

    OK this is not entirely the truth in all the cases...but I have about 345,67 test cases that certify the opposite, he he

    PS: the fact that some "preview" is displayed doesn't mean that the operation could end successfully.

    Ugly news: Rhino5 does this in 0.0056 seconds

    best, Peter

    SWA-abe-1.dgn
  • BTW: with regard that hideous delay(s) issue test this:

    In Microstation:

    And then STEP inport the path and the profile in Rhino5