Rapidform Success » XOV

How to send scaled section profiles from XOV2 into CAD

Tom Charron — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:41:57 +0000

One of the great features of XOV is that you can cut cross sections through your model to see the deviation between your nominal model and the scanned part. Once you take a cross section, you can use XOV’s 2D GD&T tools to take measurements and check tolerances, and you can include all this info in an XOV inspection report. But what if you want to take the cross section into CAD and print it at the correct scale? As we heard a lot in last week’s Success conference, “there’s a button for that”.

Let’s walk through the process:

1) After you’ve imported and aligned your nominal and scan data, create a section profile by going to Insert>Section

2) After you’ve created a section, you can export it as a DXF file. Right mouse click on the section entity in XOV’s feature tree, then select Export from the drop down menu.

In the export pop up window, set Export Section As to 2D, and choose AutoCAD DXF as the export format.

3) Open the DXF file in your CAD software, where you can make a draft or scaled print out.

Learn more with F1

Mike Tsang — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:27:23 +0000

The F1 Key

Rapidform contains a plethora of features and commands. Many of which that have options that provide additional functions and control. Have you ever wondered what happens if you uncheck a checkbox? What happens if you slide that slider all the way to the right? Or just wanted to learn more about a command in general?

Well stop the wondering and press the F1 key!

The F1 key by default brings up the content help guide. This will show you the help document for the particular command you happen to be using. For example, in Rapidform, go to Insert>Ref. Geometry>Point from the menu bar.

Once you’ve got the command open, press the F1 Key.

The content help window will appear providing you with additional insight on that particular command.

RAM and Rapidform

Mike Tsang — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:42:45 +0000

How much RAM can Rapidform use with a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system?

XOR/XOV/XOS 32-bit versions can use a maximum of 2GB (by default) or optionally 3GB. The 64-bit versions can theoretically use an “unlimited” amount of memory that is available by Windows.

So generally speaking, the memory limit of Rapidform depends on the memory limit of Windows.

Windows XP 32-bit is restricted to a total of 4 GB, which is, by default, equally divided between Kernel and application usage. Using the /3GB switch in the boot.ini file forces Windows to limit the kernel to the upper 1GB and provides up to 3GB for applications. Windows XP x64 can support much more memory. The theoretical memory limit that a 64-bit computer can address is about 16 exabytes (16 billion gigabytes), Windows XP x64 is currently limited to 128 GB of physical memory and 8 TB of virtual memory. In the future this limit will be increased as hardware capabilities improve.
————————————————————————–
2^32 = 4,294,967,296 bytes
4,294,967,296 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 4,096 MB = 4GB (gigabytes)

2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 16EB (exabytes)
————————————————————————–

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx for more info on memory limitations for each Windows OS version.

Latest Version Number of Rapiform Software

Som Valliyappan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:00:09 +0000

You can find the version number of Rapidform Software by following these steps

1. Start the software
2. Goto Help->About
3. The version number will be displayed on the pop up splash screen as shown below the title Version Information

The Latest Version Number of Rapidform XOR is XOR2 SP1 Hotfix8

The Latest Version Number of Rapidform XOS is XOS2 SP1 Hotfix8

The Latest Version Number of Rapidform XOV is XOV2 SP1 HF2

To download the latest version click here

ICF publishing tips (Creating a web page with an embedded 3D model)

Tom Charron — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:07:21 +0000

Rapidform XOS, XOR and XOV can create web pages with your 3D scan, CAD model or inspection result embedded as rotatable 3D models. They do this by creating an ICF (INUS Compression Format) file and an associated html file, which you can then place on a web server for people inside and outside your organization to access. The web page makes use of a plugin, the ICF Viewer, to view the 3D models inside Internet Explorer (it’s an ActiveX plugin, so it works in Internet Explorer but not Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.)

To publish the ICF and html files, go to File>Publish>ICF. You’ll have several options (like image size, compression amount, etc.) that you can set before publishing the file to a specific location on your PC hard drive. For even more control over how your 3D web model is presented, you can edit the html file and add any of the parameters listed below.

After you publish an ICF file from Rapidform, go to the folder where the html file was created and open it with something like notepad. You’ll see html code like this:

CODEBASE=”http://www.rapidform.com/icfviewerxo2#VERSION=1,0,0,5″

CLASSID=clsid:E2B55A3D-1A41-4F58-A675-FFD34F45CBA0

HEIGHT=600 WIDTH=800>

To edit or add any additional parameters, simply add new lines with the parameter name and value in the same format as above. If you do not specify a parameter, the default will be used by the ICF Viewer plugin.

Here are the parameter list you can use in the html code.

PARAM NAME	VALUE	Default value
IcfPath	Location of ICF file
BackgroundColor	Three real values between 0 and 1, for example “0.5 1.0 0.5″
ShowGrid	“true”, “false”	“true”
ShowWorldAxis	“true”, “false”	“true”
EnableGradientBackgroud	“true”, “false”	“true”
EnableGradientBackground	“true”, “false”	“true”
EnableDynamicDraw	“true”, “false”	“true”
DynamicDisplayRatio	“100″, “50″, “25″, “10″, “5″, “1″, “0.5″, “0.1″	“100″
StaticDisplayRatio	“100″, “50″, “25″, “10″, “5″, “1″, “0.5″, “0.1″	“25″
EnableAntialiasing	“true”, “false”	“false”
NumOfSamples	In case EnableAntialiasing is true, number of antialiasing sampling	“4″
ShadingMode	“point shading”, “smooth shading”, “smooth shading with point”, “smooth shading with point”, “flat shading”, “flat shading with edge “, “flat shading with edge”	“smooth shading”
Light	“light1″, “light2″, “light3″, “light4″ or “lightall”	“light1″
ProjectionMode	“perspective”, “parallel”	“perspective”
ViewOrientation	“front”, “back”, “left”, “rignt”, “top”, “bottom”, “isometric”	“front”
EnableViewportLock	“true”, “false”	“false”
EnableTransparency	“true”, “false”	“false”
DrawBackface	“true”, “false”	“false”
BackfaceMode	“complement color”, “as is”	“complement color”
AnnotAlignMode	“free” , “snap”, “automatic”	“free”
PointSize	Size of vertex point, it should be integer value and bigger than 0	“2”
ShowModelTree	“true”, “false”	“false”
AutoShowHideModelTree	“true”, “false”	“true”

Rapidform Success 2009 Training Conference

Rob Liebert — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:30:45 +0000

We are having our Rapidform Success Training Conference this April (14-17) at the Hilton in Las Vegas! Come join our team of experts and our growing network of hardcore users, as we all take part in a wonderful opportunity to:

Gain expert training from the most well-versed Rapidform trainers and users,
Become a Certified Rapidform Professional and earn instant industry credentials,
Network with the most experienced professionals in the world of 3D scanning,
… and much more!

Click Here for More Information
Click Here to Register Online

We hope to see you there,

Rapidform Inc.

Using the Pro/E Wildfire Interface in XOV

Michael Mock — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:32 +0000

XOV, the world’s leading inspection package, is capable of importing many neutral CAD formats. In addition, CAD interfaces can be added to XOV to improve the fidelity of inspecting physical objects to your original CAD parts.

One such interface is for Pro/E Wildfire. With the Pro/E interface, you can open the PRT files from Pro/E directly. The advantages of this are the high fidelity of opening the exact data, right from Pro/E. When a CAD file is saved in a neutral format, some information can be lost or miswritten. To avoid the possibility of these common errors, XOV can open the PRT files directly, thus removing any chance of file interoperability issues.

Pro/E Wildfire uses a numbering convention to store revisions to it’s files. An example would be a file named: Example_Part.prt.1. This would be the first revision, hence the number one. As changes are made to the part, Pro/E stores each revision with a accending numerical identifier. Such as Example_Part.prt.2 and Example_Part.prt.3

This revisioning is very useful, however, XOV can not process the file with the indentifier at the end, as it is treated like a file extention. Much like Windows does not think a *.1 file is a Pro/E file, neither does XOV.

The solution to this inconveniance is simple. In Pro/E, Save a Copy of the part you want to inspect. Perhaps save it in a directory with the scan data and XOV file. After the file has been saved, use the Windows Explorer or comperable program to navigate to the file, and rename it to *.prt from *.prt.1

Now, XOV can open the Pro/E file directly using the Pro/E interface.

How To Extract True Scale Section Profiles from CAD and Scan Data

Rob Liebert — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:36:52 +0000

In XOV, you can obtain several types of inspection results, such as deviation maps, section profiles, etc. during the inspection process. However, the results will be recorded as captured images. If, instead, you want to print out sections at their true scale, you can export them via the *.dxf file format.

Method:
First of all, you can create a section profile from the CAD and Scan data using a Ref. Plane, as shown in the image below. (Design > Section)

Choose File > Export in the menu, then select both the CAD and Scan sections, as shown in the image below.

Click the OK button, then select AutoCAD DXF (dxf file format) as the saving file type. Check “2D section” in the “Export Section As” option at the bottom, as in the image below.

Import the file into AutoCAD, and you can make a draft or print it out with the scale option.

Replacing manual thickness measurement with 3D scanning

Tom Charron — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:33:00 +0000

Problem

Measuring the thickness of an object like a propeller has generally been a tedious process that is difficult to repeat consistently.

The traditional thickness measurement process goes something like this:

Mark each blade to define cylindrical (or conic) cross sections
Using a flexible ruler, measure several points along each cross section (top and bottom), marking each one
Using calipers, measure the thickness at each marked point

As you can see, there’s a lot of room for error and individual variation between parts and inspectors.

Solution

Using a 3D scanner, you can scan these same parts, and then set up Rapidform XOV to automatically measure thickness (among other things) and generate a report for each part. Using these technologies, the process is 100% repeatable for every like part.

Here’s how the process works with a 3D scanner and XOV:

Scan the part. (There are a variety of scanners available; you can find pricing and accuracy info on rapidform.com’s 3D scanner info page)
Open the scan data in XOV, and create offset cylinders/cones that will be used for measurement
Create section curves from the cylinders/cones, and then set the measurement points along the curves using “Add thickness deviation pattern”
The software reports the thickness values for each requested location

Note that once you’ve defined the cylinders and measurement points on a given part, every like part after that can be inspected with just one operation. You can also set up a trend analysis report to aggregate the results of several part inspections and look for trends.