CAD Tutorial: How to Use AutoCAD Hatch Command?

CAD Tutorial: How to Use AutoCAD Hatch Command?

First, let’s find out how to specify the patterns, colors and layers of your hatches in the Hatch dialogue box.

Steps:

1. Input [Hatch] and press Enter to invoke the Hatch dialogue box.
2. Click the icon  at the bottom right of the dialogue box to expand it.
3. Select a hatch pattern, color and layer.
4. Select the to-be-hatched entity by clicking it.
5. Click “OK”.

Now you can easily check and manage your hatches in the Properties panel.

Then, here’s how to specify the angle and scale of your hatches.

Steps:

1. Input [Hatch] and press Enter to invoke the Hatch dialogue box.
2. Select a hatch pattern.
3. Customize the angle the hatch pattern is going to rotate, and the scale it is going to scale.
4. Repeat the above steps 4-6.

See? I can create the standard section of part models in this way.

Tip

You can view the hatch result vividly while picking the to-be-hatched entities if you tick off the Dynamic Preview option in the Hatch dialogue box. After previewing, press Enter and you can go back to the Hatch Dialogue box. Click “OK” to confirm it.

AutoCAD Attribute Blocks Tutorial: How to create Attribute Blocks

When learning the CAD commands beginning with B, I encountered a foreign concept, attribute blocks. What are they? How are they different from regular blocks? With these questions in mind, I did my homework. This article is to share what I’ve learned. If you happen to be unfamiliar with them, keep on reading!

What is an attribute block?

Simply put, an attribute block is a block with dynamic content that can be easily modified, so that you can create several blocks with different texts conveniently. It is very helpful when you need to make annotations. Commonly used in AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) and mechanical design, they are especially suitable for designing doors and windows as well as customizing roughness symbols, title blocks, BOM, etc.

Take the architectural drawing below as an example, the same block can be used for multiple grid labels, with their attributes being different letters and numbers.

By modifying the attributes, you can adjust the display of an attribute block. But how? Continue reading and you’ll see!

How to create attribute blocks?

To create an attribute block is to simply add text attributes to geometric objects and then turn them into a block.

After drawing your geometric object, you can define its attributes with the “Define Attributes” dialog box. There are 2 ways to invoke it:

1. Click Insert→Attribute→Define Attributes in the menu.
2. Input [ATT] and press Enter.

As you can see, the main parameters of an attribute are name, prompt, and default text.

The name is a tag for your attribute block. For example, if an attribute is to represent the height, you can input “height”.

The prompt appears in the command line when you insert the attribute block. In this case, you can input “input the height”.

The default text is the default value of this attribute. The icon on its right helps you input different fields, for example, a date.

After defining these three main parameters, you can just adjust the rest of the parameters, such as its style and visibility (There’s another way to do this, remember?) according to your needs. Most often, you can just ignore them and click Define and Exit. Then specify the point where you would like to insert the attribute.

With the object and its attributes ready, just select them all and create a block as you normally would. (If you have no idea how to do that, this can help!) Now, an attribute block was born, and you can modify its attributes with ease. In this example, you can easily change one of the height attributes from 0.000 to 3.230.

BTW, there can be multiple attributes for one block. For example, both length and width can be the attributes of a rectangle.

What is the difference between text attributes and regular texts?

The biggest difference between them is that the text attributes of blocks are dynamic and can be changed easily to be various. To modify them, just double-click the attribute block, and the Enhanced Attribute Editor dialog box will pop up, allowing you to edit the attributes.

See how the dynamic text attributes in one block differ from each other? That’s how we can tell them from static texts.

There will be a different result if you insert a block with regular texts. The heights will all be 0.000 because static texts of a block are like other geometric components. Since they can’t adjust themselves dynamically, you will have to spend more time creating different blocks.

That’s what I’ve learned about attribute blocks. Knowing how to use them really improves my drawing efficiency! If you find this article helpful, leave a comment!

Hybrid Modeling in ZW3D: A Highly Flexible Modeling Technology

If you are working on product design with a 3D CAD system, you must know the technology of hybrid modeling, which combines surface modeling and solid modeling methods in one CAD system, and is usually applied to product prototype design or structural design. However, it’s more than a simple combination. What’s the meaning of “hybrid”? Have you ever probed into this concept? Are the current solutions of hybrid modeling “hybrid” enough? To answer these questions, today, I would like to discuss this technology with you.

Figure 1. Apply solid-surface hybrid modeling to product design

Solid Modeling VS Surface Modeling

To help you clearly and completely understand hybrid modeling, I would first introduce solid modeling and surface modeling, which are two mainstream geometric modeling methods composing hybrid modeling.

• Solid modeling emphasizes on physical fidelity, which represents an object precisely by describing its surface boundary and topological orientation so that we can completely tell the geometric and topological information of the object, including its vertex, edge, face, volume, etc. Solid models are parametric, offering accurate geometric data for editing, engineering analysis and production.

Figure 2. A model created by solid modeling method

• In contrast, surface modeling describes an object’s exterior by surfaces, which have no thickness and allow overlaps and gaps. With this method, you can create external shapes of an object by stretching infinitesimally thin surfaces over it with 3D curves. Surface modeling is often applied to creating complex or streamlined products. Sports car design is the typical case.

Figure 3. A surface created by surface modeling method

To summarize, solid modeling describes shapes precisely, but it’s a bit time-consuming. Surface modeling creates shapes freely, helping to present products in the short term. However, its results lack the dataset needed for engineering.

Most Hybrid Modeling Methods are Not Hybrid Enough

The choices between solid modeling and surface modeling have plagued designers since the dawn of 3D CAD software. Now, most mainstream 3D CAD solutions have enabled hybrid modeling for engineers to utilize these two methods at the same time. They put solid modeling and surface modeling into one CAD environment, saving your time from switching software.

However, is it hybrid enough to just put these two methods in one CAD system? Think about this question when you need to sew or add thickness to the surfaces every time before turning them into solid, which is probably the most common situation you meet. Or recall those days when you buried in fixing your models before doing mold parting and splitting. If a hybrid modeling technology cannot support doing Boolean operations between solid and surface, it can not truly satisfy users‘needs on product design.

Reading this far, you may wonder can these two modeling methods get truly integrated, achieving more flexible hybrid modeling? In ZW3D, it’s not a daydream.

ZW3D Offers More Flexible Hybrid Modeling

Over the years, the ZW3D team has been working on deeply integrating surface and solid modeling to take full advantage of the strengths of both the two modeling technologies. With its OverdriveTM kernel, the Solid-Surface Hybrid Modeling technology is realized, enabling you to design really flexibly with solids and surfaces simultaneously. What are the unique benefits of hybrid modeling in ZW3D? Let’s see!

• Doing Boolean Operations with solid and surface simultaneously, which means that you can cut surface with solid and cut solid with surface at the same time. For most 3D CAD software, designers can cut solids with surfaces. Is it possible to also cut surfaces with solids? Using Solid-surface Hybrid Modeling in ZW3D, this can happen. You can freely do Boolean operations, so that shapes or solids can be added to, removed from or intersected into surfaces to get the results you want.

Figure 4. Cut surface with solid

• Most commands can be applied to both solids and surfaces. Normally, the commands of solid modeling and surface modeling are separated, which means that you have to learn all the commands and distinguish the differences between them, making your 3D modeling learning curve long. With Solid Surface Hybrid Modeling, this is no longer a burden. It eliminates the barrier between solid modeling and surface modeling, enabling you to use the same set of commands for both solids and surfaces. More convenient, right?

Figure 5. Abundant tools can be applied to both solids and surfaces

Figure 6. Apply Fillet command to a surface

• Tiny imperfections won’t restrain your design. It’s common to get imperfect models after importing third-party data or when designing models with complicated structures. Normally, designers have to spend lots of time to make the models watertight before moving to next steps, which would be sometimes wearisome and time-consuming. We must admit that creating a perfect model is a good habit during design. But you don’t have to be a perfectionist all the time when the flaws are not key factors in specific design tasks. When the design flaws are within tolerance, we offer a chance to breathe in case you are trapped in healing models, leaving you more time for more important work. For example, you can do a quick mold parting in ZW3D even though the model is not completely watertight, winning time for quotation and increasing competitiveness.

Figure 7. Do mold parting when the model has a tiny gap

It’s Time to Design Products with Highly Flexible Hybrid Modeling

If you are bothered by too rigid solid modeling or insufficiently rigorous surface modeling or get frustrated sometimes to deal with tedious healing work in a not hybrid enough CAD space, I believe you could know the benefits of Solid Surface Hybrid Modeling in ZW3D once knowing how it works. Yes, more flexible, powerful, efficient. Fancy words may not be convincing in today’s market. But true solid-surface hybrid modeling can make a huge change to your work once you use it. If you still doubt it, why not have a try? Seeing is believing. Download ZW3D>>

3D CAD Viewer - CADbro 2020: Real-time Collaboration in 3D CAD Space

3D CAD Viewer Free Online, for sales and marketing teams to view 3D CAD model without expensive CAD system. Viewing  STEP, Catia, NX, JT, IGES and many other formats. 

GUANGZHOU, China: December 19th, 2019 – ZWSOFT today unveiled the new CADbro 2020, an easy-to-use 3D CAD viewer designed for everyone who needs to collaborate on engineering data, especially salespeople, technical workers, quality controllers, designers, etc.

Featuring real-time collaboration, extended online viewing functions, optimized workflow in CADbro Cloud, and new 3D BOM, CADbro 2020 delivers smoother-than-ever internal and external collaboration in 3D CAD space.

Real-time collaboration tools

Efficiency and accuracy are critical to collaboration on 3D CAD data. In CADbro 2020, you can collaborate in real time with project members, incluing your teammates, colleagues from other departments, clients, as well as up & downstream suppliers. For example, you can invite them to join an online discussion. The operations done on the model such as rotating, viewing sections, adding dimensions and so on, will be synchronized immediately on their windows. You can also chat with them and play back the meeting afterwards. Now, no matter how complicated the 3D model is, your communication is crystal clear and efficient.

Figure 1. Share model status with project members by real-time collaboration tools

More flexible online viewing

Viewing 3D models anytime and anywhere on the web is the star function of CADbro Cloud. In CADbro 2020, the online viewing functions have been extended and optimized. First, there are more options for link sharing, enabling you to set different permissions for your receivers, like expiry date, passwords, view times or the privileges to view assembly tree, exploded view, PMI, etc.

Figure 2. Set permissions after generating share links for models

Other viewing commands are also more friendly. For example, you can conduct operations such as isolating and hiding by right clicking the model, and choose from the 6 viewing angles by rotating the cube on the upper-right corner. Moreover, the Move and Restore commands can help you quickly and freely drag the components to check or demonstrate the model, and restore them to the original location in a second. The list still goes on, such as exploding according to assembly structure, Perspective View, Unit Switcher, etc., all of which are designed for you to work around the model in any situation.

Figure 3. View models more flexibly on web

Optimized workflow for CADbro Cloud on web

Smooth collaboration cannot be realized without a good project management workflow. In CADbro Cloud of this version, a more reasonable project management workflow on web is ready. You can create teams and projects based on your needs, assign roles to project members, and authorize corresponding permissions to different roles. What’s more, you can separate spaces for team collaboration and for your personal use. With the optimized workflow, your 3D CAD data can be well organized.

Figure 4. Manage team members and projects in CADbro Cloud webpage

New 3D BOM

Documentation is a necessary part of production. Traditionally, BOMs are generated along with 2D drawings. However, it is time-consuming and needless for salesperson, purchasing staff and others who don’t need engineering drawings. In CADbro 2020, 3D BOM eliminates the bottleneck, enabling you to generate BOM directly in 3D space, benefiting your part attributes management. You can select which items to include in the BOM by filters like Parts only and Shape only, calculate, search and edit attributes, export to excel files and reuse the customized templates. With 3D BOM, collaboration gets more efficient.

Figure 5. Manage part attributes in 3D BOM configuration form

CADbro 2020, designed for collaboration

"Helping users collaborate on engineering data smoothly in 3D CAD space is the original intention of the CADbro product team. In CADbro 2020, we have finally realized the collaboration function in the true sense. I am really excited about it." said Terry Deng, the Product Manager of CADbro. Now, CADbro 2020 is available online for you to download and try. Start enjoying real-time collaboration in 3D CAD space!

About CADbro

As one of ZWSOFT's star products, CADbro is a 3D CAD viewer that helps with your collaboration on engineering data. Packed with an intuitive interface, advanced tools to view, annotate, analyze, and cloud service to share, CADbro allows you to communicate 3D CAD data with project members anytime and anywhere. 

3D CAD Tutorial: Use Direct Edit to Quickly Modify a Pedestal

Direct Edit is your ideal tool to flexibly post-edit model data. Instead of searching and editing the features in the lengthy history tree, you can directly modify geometric data. Click here to know how Direct Edit in ZW3D accelerates your post-editing work.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to modify a pedestal with Direct Edit quickly. Are you ready to grasp the tricks of this tool? Download the model and follow me!

Figure 1. The Pedestal before (left) and after (right) Direct Editing

STEP 1: Use Dim Move Face to modify the distance between entities

With Dim Move Face, you can move specified faces according to stationary reference faces. First, click Dim Move Face and select “Linear” in the dialog. Choose the blue face as the motion face and the pink one as the stationary face. Pick the orange faces as a motion group and set the distance as 50mm. Then the upper part of the pedestal will be higher.

Figure 2. Dim Move Face

STEP 2: Use DE Move to move entities along a direction

Click DE Move and select the 3rd move type, which can help move objects along a specified direction. Then pick the left face and the hole marked yellow below as “Faces”, and set the direction and distance as figure 3 shown.

Figure 3. DE Move

STEP 3: Use Align Move Face to move entities symmetrically

Click Align Move Face and select “Symmetric”. Pick the left face as the stationary face, the right face as the motion face and the hole as a motion group. Set the YZ plane as the symmetry plane.

Figure 4. Align Move Face

STEP 4: Use DE Move to move entities along a direction

Click DE Move command and select the 4th move type. Pick the small hole as “Faces” and set the center of the orange edge as the direction of the rotation axis. Set the angle as 30 degrees to move the small hole to the top of the model.

Figure 5. DE Move

STEP 5: Use Modify Fillets to adjust the radius of the fillets

Click Modify Fillets, pick the fillets at the four corners of the pedestal, and set the radius as 12mm.

Figure 6. Modify Fillets

STEP 6: Use Modify Holes to adjust the holes

Select Modify Holes in the Shape ribbon tab, pick the two holes on the base and set the parameters to get the desired result.

Figure 7. Modify Holes

So far, the overall adjustments of the pedestal have been completed. Have you got the tricks of Direct Edit? With Direct Edit, you can directly modify and reuse the existing features and parameters of internal or external models. Please let me know your ideas via comments.

CAM: The Efficient Strategies You Shouldn’t Miss to Process an Impeller

If you are working in the fields of energy, automotive, aviation, maritime navigation, etc., impeller is surely your old friend, who helps increase the pressure and speed of flow of a fluid to produce centrifugal force. Due to the complexity of manufacturing an impeller, it becomes a typical case in 5-axis machining.

ZW3D CAM module offers comprehensive strategies from 2 to 5-axis machining like Smooth Flow, Swarf, Drive Curve, Drive Surface, Flow Cut, etc., which make impeller machining no longer a difficult job. In this article, I’m going to show you how to generate toolpaths for an impeller easily. Let’s get right to it.

Figure 1. The impeller model in this case

Step 1: Choose SmoothFlow strategy in 3x Quick-Rough to remove the excess stock on top of the workpiece.

Figure 2. SmoothFlow in 3x Quick-Rough ribbon

Figure 3. From left to right: the toolpath generated by SmoothFlow strategy, the simulated effect, and the actual machining effect

Step 2: Use SmoothFlow strategy again to conduct indexing roughing on the areas beneath the blades. In this step, the key is to set the correct sub-coordinate system, by which we can process the hub areas directly in different directions without undercutting.

So how to generate toolpaths by sub-coordinates? First, create a sub coordinate on one of the blades, and set the direction of Z-axis pointing to you. Then select the frame just created in the configuration form of Rough SmoothFlow strategy. After that, toolpaths can be created under the blades. You can continue to generate toolpaths for the areas beneath other blades conveniently by Circular Array.

Figure 4. Set the direction of Z-axis of the sub coordinate

Figure 5. From left to right: the toolpaths of areas under the blades, the simulated effect, and the actual machining effect

After the first two steps, the roughing process of the impeller has been completed. Next, we are going to conduct 5-axis simultaneous machining.

Step 3: Use Enlarge Face command to enlarge the top surface of the blade, then use Guide Surface Iso strategy to create extended toolpaths for the enlarged surface, to ensure the thoroughness of actual machining for the top of the blade.

Figure 6. Use Guide Surface Iso strategy to extend toolpaths for the top of the blade

Step 4: Use Offset 3D strategy to create toolpaths for the top of the hub. This strategy can leave out too much tool lifting, and keep the steps equidistant, increasing machining efficiency and quality.

Figure 7. Use Offset 3D to generate toolpaths for the top of the hub

Step 5: Use Swarf strategy to mill the blades. Set the surface of a blade as the Drive Surface, and the hub as the Part Surface. Then use Swarf strategy to generate the toolpaths for one blade.

Figure 8. Set the 5-axis Drive Surface and Part Surface

Figure 9. Refer to the toolpaths generated just now, and create the toolpaths for all other blades by Transform command

Step 6: Process the hub area between two blades. First create the toolpaths for two drive curves as the edges of the area. Then choose 5-axis Flow Cut strategy to create uniform toolpaths to fill the area between two drive curves.

Figure 10. Generate two drive curves and create uniform toolpaths to fill the area between them

Step 7: Finally, use Side strategy in 5x Mill ribbon to create toolpaths for the rest areas of the workpiece.

Figure 11. The generated toolpaths for the rest areas of the workpiece

So far, the machining toolpaths for the impeller have been created. Let’s see the impeller after machining.

Figure 12. The well-processed impeller

Have you got the tricks of machining an impeller? I would recommend you practice with ZW3D CAM module, which is smart and easy-to-operate. Download the model and have a try!

Use AutoCAD EXTRUDE to Create 3D Solid

AutoCAD tutorial: how to use EXTRUDE to create 3D solid?

EXTRUDE

This command is similar to EXTEND, but you can use it to create a 3D solid from a surface or a surface from a line in several ways. It will save you a lot of time if you use it to draw walls.

Before you invoke this command, make sure that you’ve switched to an oblique view.

Steps:

1. Input [EXT] and press Enter.
2. Select the to-be-extruded entities.
3. Specify the height/direction/path/taper angle of extrusion following the prompts in the command line.

As the GIF above shows, I created a surface from a line, a solid from a surface and an extrusion along a specified path.

Tips

1. The system variable, DELOBJ, controls whether to delete the original objects. When it is 1, the original objects are deleted, whereas they are retained when it is 0.

2. The value of the taper angle could be from “-90” to “+90”. When it is positive, the extruded part will be tapered, while when it is negative, the extruded part will be larger than the original entity. If it is 0, the entity will be extended in the direction vertical to the plane where the original entity lies.

3. Blocks and self-intersecting polylines can’t be extruded.