Tool to create centerlines piperuns

Unknown said:

...always get these cad models coming from different cad softwares...

Can you provide a couple of small DGN files, from different sources, that illustrate the sort of pipe runs you want to analyse?

Unknown said:

helgeh

...always get these cad models coming from different cad softwares...

Can you provide a couple of small DGN files, from different sources, that illustrate the sort of pipe runs you want to analyse?

Yes, but need a day or two to find the time to do that. The most problematic ones are those who translates in to mesh objects. Idealy i would need to recreate them as solids ( for my use ), and to do that i could use the centerlines (smartlines) and just extrude them with the correct diameters.

Unknown said:

The most problematic ones are those who translates in to mesh objects...

You've just raised the complexity of the task by an order of magnitude!

Unknown said:

helgeh

The most problematic ones are those who translates in to mesh objects...

You've just raised the complexity of the task by an order of magnitude!

Ha ha, that might be correct. I thought i would metion the worst exsample i could think of. It should be said that the "pipes" always comes in as single primitives/parts. So its not one big mesh but one bend becomes one mesh object etc.

Since you are using Descartes, you could try the following:

1) Drop mesh elements to shapes using the "Drop Element" tool.
2) Select the shapes.
3) Use the "Extract Points from Curve" tool to extract points from the shapes with following settings:
-Location(s) Input By = Node Points
-Compute Following Attributes = Points
4) Use data cleanup utility to delete duplicate points at each vertex.
5) Use the "Export Coordinates" tool to create a text file containing the point's coordinates.
6) convert the text file to POD.
7) Use Descartes' "Fit Cylinder" tool to extract the centerline of your pipes.

HTH,
Pascal