That said, I wonder if I can make a small request.
I am in a position to request Apogee Level IV software for a Starrett CMM myself but would like some assurance that it will meet our needs.
A little background:
We are a manufacturing company with a unique product in high demand to meet ±.060" tolerance under the hood of a diesel truck. I am responsible for a reverse engineering step with some custom modifications to OEM Aluminum manifolds. I create complete solid and/or surface models using Cadkey99 software (with the Solids99 and FastSURF99 applications).
We were attracted to Starrett because it supports a third-party software package that would allow us to do real-time CAD linking from the CMM. Why I would pay even more money for solutions that I should already be getting with the CMM software I don't know.
Our tanks have non-analytic transition regions that need to be faithfully reproduced and sectioned in detailed drawings. (Each tank is different but all go from a round cylindrical connection to a long open rectangular face with all kinds of twists and turns in between.)
My question to you is do you know how feasible it is to regularly take complex freeform IGES bodies out of Apogee Level IV and import them INTACT* into CADKEY? And vice versa?
We would have lots of use for Apogee Level IV software because of the "bi-directional CAD capability", but a demonstration to convince us has not been convenient so far. I am thinking of sending our Starrett rep an actual tank sample and asking to have it digitized, modeled in Apogee IV and exported to IGES so that we could try to work with it in Cadkey. Would this be a valid exercise?
When I try to import IGES surfaces from another provider of CMM software into Cadkey, I can't seem to get reliable results. Without some first-hand proof I'm concerned about how well the Apogee Level IV product will do at this same task. Can you offer any help or advice? BTW I'm also consulting Cadkey on the file translation issue.
Thanks for any help.
Stanley Schnuerer
web page: www.duralite.net
* Note: By "intact" I mean that the solid or surface is recognized by the rendering commands.