CAD Forum

so what's the easy way?

I had an excel spreadsheet with a bunch of points that I had calculated ~500pts. I looked at 3Dscan function but I don't have it because I don't have premium. I then found a macro that imported the points. The one I used imported each point into it's own 3D sketch. I then exported that as an IGS and reimported to get all the points into a single 3D sketch.

I then inserted a curve thru reference points in lines, 20-23 lines, each direction, X and Y.

I'm now in the process of attempting to loft all the curves in one direction as profiles and all the curves in the other direction as guide curves. Picking them one by one is painfully slow and laborious, selecting all from the graphics window feature tree seems, well, unpredictable.

I don't use surfaces regularly so speak to me like I'm a four year old please

I'm continually struck by how SW sometimes doesn't have some basic things like being able to just open a text file of points or not being able to scale a 3D sketch.

The Scan to 3D add-in is available in SW Professional and Premium. If you upload your points file I can pull it in to DesignX and get a surface for you.

JSculley wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 2:26 pm The Scan to 3D add-in is available in SW Professional and Premium. If you upload your points file I can pull it in to DesignX and get a surface for you.

Hmmm, I have professional and couldn't find it. Is it possibly an addin? When I looked at how to use it it said that you just open a part and select the .TXT file...I don't have that option.

Never mind, you said it was an addin and I found it.

I warn you-
Here a while back I was having an issue with SW crashing. I turned the ScanTo3D add-in off and !presto! that fixed it!

Jaylin Hochstetler wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 8:09 am I warn you-
Here a while back I was having an issue with SW crashing. I turned the ScanTo3D add-in off and !presto! that fixed it!

I don't plan on keeping it on. I only load the addins I'm currently using. So this one will go off as soon as I load the cloud data.

Jaylin Hochstetler wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 8:09 am I warn you-
Here a while back I was having an issue with SW crashing. I turned the ScanTo3D add-in off and !presto! that fixed it!

If you were also using the CAM add-in it may have been this:

SPR 1194209: SOLIDWORKS CAM: SOLIDWORKS Crashes with SOLIDWORKS CAM and Scanto3D Add-ins turn on


It is listed as fixed in SW 2021 SP1.

The macro programmer probably decided to have each point imported into its own sketch to avoid having points accidentally merge. Too bad for him. There's an option setting that prevents this. Also, points could be fixed as they were created.