VW 2009 and MasterCam

[Loren42]

Greetings,

Previously I have used VW 12.5.3 and have done everything in 2-D mode. Our machine shop we use then takes the drawings and hand draws them over again in MasterCam. This is a waste of time and money.

I have upgraded to VW 2009 and just started using 3-D, which is a joy so far, but now I have questions about how I should implement everything.

First, it looks like I need two renderings of everything. One must be 2-D to let me annotate and dimension all of the features of the part. Next, is another rendering in 3-D.

My first question is, how do I do this? Is there a standard convention I should use? Do I have to replicate two sheets for every part (one in 3-D and one in 2D)m or should they live on the same page?

Second, does anyone have any experience with exporting VW documents to MasterCam? I want to make the effort from drawing to physical part as easy for our machine shop (and ourselves) as possible.

I am struggling to do this mainly because my field of expertise is electrical engineering, but I have had to wear a mechanical engineering hat lately.

We are making machined parts for aircraft controls out of aluminum and steel. The machine shop we employ uses CNC to reproduce these parts.

Thanks in advance,

Loren

[Guest Tomu]

Hi Loren,

You can do what you want using viewports. Create a 3D model and then use viewports to create the annotated 2D drawing. For some examples look in the folder: C:\Users\...\Nemetschek\Vectorworks\2009\Extras\Samples\Butterfly Valve. After creating the 3D model, use the command Machine Design > Create Multiple Views to set up the viewports.

Secondly, you can export the 3D model as SAT or IGES and import the SAT or IGES file into MasterCam.

Tom Urie

tomu@vectorworks.net

[Loren42]

Thanks!