Mesh is our automatic generator for 2D meshes of conformal triangular elements. The program includes a convenient Drawing Editor to define boundaries of regions (physical objects) in the solution volume. This mini-CAD utility is easy to use and has many useful features. Nonetheless we included the option to import data from popular CAD programs for two reasons:
- We couldn’t begin to duplicate all the advanced features of dedicated CAD programs for professional engineers.
- Users often have detailed drawings of assemblies that would be laborious to duplicate in another program.
As the medium of exchange, we picked the DXF text format. Like the STL format used by our 3D MetaMesh program, DXF is an open, relatively neutral format that must be supported by all CAD manufacturers.
Over the years, we went through some difficult times with the DXF interface, largely caused by the elephant in the room, AutoDesk. There was a period when they regularly changed their DXF standards. At one time, AutoCAD recorded layer information in a format different than AutoSketch! On top of that, the program was expensive for a casual user. We suggested free or low-cost alternatives like QCAD and TurboCAD, but such programs tended to be underpowered or quirky.
Dassault Systèmes, the makers of SolidWorks, have released a new 2D CAD editor, DraftSight, available at no charge. The cost is right for casual users and the program appears to have sufficient power for engineers. Most important, DraftSight can read and write all flavors of DWG and DXF files and covert between them. I downloaded the program and tested it for compatibility with Mesh. The program can understand DXF files created by the Mesh Drawing Editor. There are many options for DXF export. To be conservative, I picked one of the earlier available formats, “R2000-2002 ASCII Drawing (*.dxf)”. Mesh had no trouble reading the resulting file. Even if you don’t plan to use DraftSight as your 2D CAD program of choice, it is worth downloading it as a format converter. Here’s the link:
http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/
DraftSight working environment
Of course, the standard rules for DXF import in Mesh apply. Here is a review:
- Mesh recognizes basic objects like lines, arcs, circles and simple polylines.
- Mesh ignores non-geometric information (like text) and advanced shapes like splines.
- Valid objects are assigned to numbered regions if they are in layers labeled “1″, “2″, … , “250″
- Valid objects in other layers are assigned to the default “Region 0″. You can move selected objects to a valid numbered region in the Drawing Editor.
Note: Field Precision is a SolidWorks Partner.