FROM:
http://www.qualitytechnologies.com

PATRICK:

You said it about autocad... a couple of things about CADKEY THOUGH... IN "TOOLS" "OPTIONS" "MISC" SET YOU CADL OUTPUT TO 6 DIGITS... THIS WILL CONSISTANTLY STRUCTURE YOU CDL FILE... ALSO WHEN YOU OUTPUT CADL FILE SELECT POLYLINES ... AS THAT IS WHAT THE VECTORS ARE MADE UP OF... IF THE SURFACES YOU ARE APPLYING VECTORS TO ARE TRIMMED SURFACES AND YOU USE THE NODE OPTION YOU WILL GET VECTORS FROM THE TRIMMED AREA... IT IS BETTER TO USE THE UV GRID OPTION TO AVOID THIS... EVEN THEN YOU WILL GET VECTORS ALONG THE EDGES OF THE PART WHICH MAY NOT GIVE GOOD RESULTS IF THE ACTUAL SURFACE IS NOT THERE...
LASTLY MAKE SURE THE VECTORS ARE GOING THE RIGHT WAY IN FASTSURF BY MODIFYING "REVERSE DIRECTION" SURFACE VECTORS BEFORE YOU APPLY THEM...ATTACHED IS AN OLD BUT FUNCTIONAL GWBASIC ROUTINE WHICH WILL CREATE X Y Z I J K ASCII FILES FROM CADL FILES... THIS WILL ONLY WORK IF CADL DIGITS ARE SET TO 6 THOUGH..

10 CLS
20 FILES "c:\CADKEY98\CDL\*.CDL"
30 CHDIR "c:\CADKEY98\CDL"
40 LINE INPUT; "IN FILE(FILE.EXT): ";W$
44 PRINT ""
45 LINE INPUT; "OUT FILE: ";S$
50 PRINT ""
60 T$="c:\CADKEY98\CDL\"+W$
70 U$="c:\CADKEY98\CDL\"+S$
80 OPEN T$ FOR INPUT AS #1
90 OPEN U$ FOR OUTPUT AS #2
100 LINE INPUT #1,C$
110 B$=LEFT$(C$,3)
120 IF B$="ARR" GOTO 130 ELSE GOTO 100
130 INPUT #1,A,B,C,D,E,F
140 X=D-A
150 Y=E-B
160 Z=F-C
170 WRITE #2, A,B,C,X,Y,Z
180 GOTO 100