IMPORTING *.JT FILES

edwinderry

I Have been sent a CAD model of a component in *.jt format, which I have imported to RS. There are no errors from the import but nothing appears in the station.

All the previous models I have used have been supplied in STEP or IGES, which I have converted to ACIS & imported without a problem.

I thought that RS could use JT files, and noticed that in the 'supporting files' folder of my stations that there are JT files automatically generated by RS from the ACIS I have imported. I can take these JT's and import them to other stations OK...

The JT file I need to use was originally exported from UGS TeamCentre.

One other thing to add - I took a JT file from the 'supporting files' folder of one of my stations and sent it to the guy who sent me the JT. He opened it in his UGS package with no problem...

Can anyone advise?

Thanks,

Edwin Derry.

edwinderry2006-5-8 20:44:26

Johannes Weiman old account

Hi Edwin,

RobotStudio only supports JT files of version 6.4 and lower. The UGS software likely uses a newer version, but maybe it can export to either a lower version or another format such as VRML?


Regards,
Johannes

Johannes Weiman2006-5-9 9:41:35

edwinderry

Johannes,

Thanks for the information.

The CAD models I will be working with are of complete car bodies, so I expect them to be very large files. The system used can export them in a number of different formats.

I have previously been working with models of plastic parts exported from the same system in STEP format, which I then converted to ACIS.

In your opinion, what is the best format for use in RS?

Thanks,

Ed.

Johannes Weiman old account

Edwin,

For work objects such as car bodies it is preferable to use a CAD format that contains a mathematical representation of the geometry, such as ACIS (SAT) or STEP. Then you can make best use of functions such as "Path from curve", "Normal to surface" and snap modes. With faceted graphic formats (JT, VRML) those functions are either less accurate or not available at all.

The only downside to using CAD files is that they will consume more memory. RobotStudio's native geometry format is ACIS so if possible use that to avoid extra conversions.

regards,
Johannes

edwinderry

Johannes,

Since our last discussion I have been waiting for our customer to supply all the CAD models.

We now have them all in STEP format, which I have spent 2 days converting to ACIS and saving as libraries.

I have now begun to build a station, only with a complete body at first, but have hit some problems which I think may be related to the very large file sizes.

I have imported 8 libraries totalling 629Mb successfully, but when I try to import the next I get a message saying Storage Error: In 'CPseStorage::Open()'threw: 'Out of memory.'

I then tried to save the station, but got another message simply saying The save operation failed.

Is this due to a limitation of my hardware (Centrino 1.73GHZ with 2.0Gb Ram and nVidia GeForce Go 6600) or is there a limit to the amount of data RobotStudio can handle?

Thanks in advance,

 

Edwin Derry.

Johannes Weiman old account

Hi Edwin,

600MB is a lot of data which when imported will consume even more memory. Possibly over 2GB which is more than RobotStudio (or most applications on 32-bit Windows) can handle.

There is one thing you can try though. If you have libraries for which you don't need the mathematical representation (see my last post), you can navigate to the "__Supporting Files" folder for those libraries and delete the *.SAT files. This way only the graphic data will be loaded when you import the library into RobotStudio.

Also, RobotStudio 4.0 which will be released shortly will contain a fix that reduces the memory usage for geometries. I'm not sure how much it would help in your case though.

regards,
Johannes

edwinderry

Johannes,

Thanks again for your valuable input.

We tried removing the SAT files from the libraries but the overall size was still causing problems.

We took the decision to convert all the original STEP format models to VRML using SolidWorks, and then convert to JT with the RS CAD Converter. It's a time consuming process, but worthwhile because the overall file size of each model is reduced by more than 80%.

Strangely, when we use these new JT models operation seems faster when we do not use them as libraries but just import the geometry. In this way we can now open the station with 50% of the car body in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds.

Thanks again!

Ed.