Calculating costs from step-file

Robbie_Vermeersch

Hi,

I'm looking for a program that can help me calculate costs for sheet metal parts. Bricscad was mentioned to me, but google didn't offer me much on this specific feature.

The aim is to import a step-file directly from the customer. This will comprise of sheet metal parts, ranging 1mm to 100mm thick, along with tubes and axles, and other parts like rubber seals, wheels, bearings, nuts and bolts, etc...

The focus is on the metal parts. These need to be calculated in terms of cutting time (laser, plasma and autogene), material usage (area, weight, volume).
For thinner parts also bending time. Thicker part often require milling and/or drilling, so if this could also be calculated, 't would be swell.

Is this possible with Bricscad (maybe with an 3rd party add-on)?

Please advice, our Sales team is heading for a collective burn-out...

Jason Bourhill

Hi Robbie,

Check out SMEXPORTOSM. This goes a long way to producing what you want. The command will iterate through an assembled model to generate flattened sheet metal of each component. Output is grouped by thickness. Having done this you could interrogate the flattened DXF files to extract the total length of the entities it contains.

There is an sheetmetal API available for LISP. You'll find details on this in the Lisp Developer Support Package (LDSP). It includes a sample SmAssemblyExport.lsp that you could use as a base to developing your own tool.

Regards,
Jason Bourhill
CAD Concepts

Egor Ermolin

Hi all,

Jason rather speaks about SMASSEMBLYEXPORT command.

I want to point out that in V19 there is C++ BRX Sheet Metal API and there is a sample application, check C:\Program Files\Bricsys\BricsCAD V19 en_US\API\brx\brxSheetMetalSample

I also admit that visiting assembly structure and treating every solid in it is not an easy task. Thus we have plans (and implement them) on improving SMASSEMBLYEXPORT command and providing API to it. Then the service can be treated as "visitor" to assembly blocks and solids, despite its application is Sheet Metal.

Keep an eye on it, that will be interesting!

Best regards,
Egor

CADMebel

@Egor Ermolin said:
Hi all,

Jason rather speaks about SMASSEMBLYEXPORT command.

I want to point out that in V19 there is C++ BRX Sheet Metal API and there is a sample application, check C:\Program Files\Bricsys\BricsCAD V19 en_US\API\brx\brxSheetMetalSample

I also admit that visiting assembly structure and treating every solid in it is not an easy task. Thus we have plans (and implement them) on improving SMASSEMBLYEXPORT command and providing API to it. Then the service can be treated as "visitor" to assembly blocks and solids, despite its application is Sheet Metal.

Keep an eye on it, that will be interesting!

Best regards,
Egor

Can You elaborate more on this? Is this means we can use the API with any solid to get bounding box size for cut list and BOM? With AutoLISP? Thanks.

Egor Ermolin

Hello CADMebel,

No. For Sheet Metal yet so far we didn't have interest in computing bounding box in 3D on any solid. SMASSEMBLYEXPORT traverses assembly, and tries to SMUNFOLD each solid. If success, DXF per solid is created. This dxf contains optimized layout of unfolding and dimensions along XY axis. Note that it is SMUNFOLD which generates this DXF.

Best regards,
Egor

CADMebel

I see. Thanks

Egor Ermolin

@Robbie_Vermeersch said:
Thicker part often require milling and/or drilling, so if this could also be calculated, 't would be swell.

You should check if this geometry is recognized as Form Features. Of course, this is a different process, but give it a try. Here I speak about non-planar faces on flanges. Note that if you turn on SETTINGS -> Sheet Metal -> Commands -> SmConvert -> Recognize holes, then straight holes on flanges also can be recognized. If lucky, then all these millings and drills will become form and hole features, then you can just count them even in LISP and get the cost. It may allow you to avoid writing same complex code for recognition by yourself.

Best regards,
Egor

gandrew

@Jason Bourhill said:
Hi Robbie,

Check out MCDVOICE. This goes a long way to producing what you want. The command will iterate through an assembled model to generate flattened sheet metal of each component. Output is grouped by thickness. Having done this you could interrogate the flattened DXF files to extract the total length of the entities it contains.

I checked it out and it helped thanks for telling about this