Make solid or mesh from polyline

[M76]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to 3DPrint a lineart drawing, but in order to do that somehow I Need to be able to add thickness to the lines. As all are 2D polylines.

Any ideas?

 

I've tried sweep, but autocad simply rejects all the lines, even the simplest ones, for an unknown reason. Extrude has the same result. There are no intersections. (I'm using map3d and checked with drawing cleanup)

[ReMark]

Have you tried changing the THICKNESS property of your 2D objects.

From the AutoCAD Knowledge Network....  

"You might need to change the 3D viewpoint to see the effect of thickness on an object.

Note: Although the thickness property adds a 3D visual appearance to 2D objects, those objects continue to be 2D objects."

[M76]

Thickness is only a visual element, it doesn't change the actual geometry.

I need to convert them into either 3D solids or closed meshes to be printable.

[Cad64]

1 hour ago, M76 said:

I'm trying to 3DPrint a lineart drawing, but in order to do that somehow I Need to be able to add thickness to the lines. As all are 2D polylines.

Any ideas?

 

I've tried sweep, but autocad simply rejects all the lines, even the simplest ones, for an unknown reason. Extrude has the same result. There are no intersections. (I'm using map3d and checked with drawing cleanup)

 

You will need to extrude the polylines to give them some height. Even if it's just 1/8". After you extrude a polyline it becomes a surface extrusion. To convert the surface into a 3D Solid, run the THICKEN command to provide some width. You might also need to run the UNION command to join all the solids together to create one object.

[M76]

40 minutes ago, Cad64 said:

 

You will need to extrude the polylines to give them some height. Even if it's just 1/8". After you extrude a polyline it becomes a surface extrusion. To convert the surface into a 3D Solid, run the THICKEN command to provide some width. You might also need to run the UNION command to join all the solids together to create one object.

As I've mentioned autocad refuses to extrude any of the lines. "objects were unable to extrude" or something like that

I figured out a method that works but a bit tedious.

1. Create network topology
2. Create buffer with the desired with
3. Create closed polygons
4. Convert polygons to regions
5. Extrude regions

 

Unfortunately the drawing has a lot of closed loops, so internal regions have to be manually substracted from the outer ones one by one.

[Cad64]

3 minutes ago, M76 said:

As I've mentioned autocad refuses to extrude any of the lines. "objects were unable to extrude" or something like that

 

We would need to see your drawing then. I don't know why the lines won't extrude.

[ReMark]

I agree with Cad64.  Post a copy of the drawing in question and erase all doubt.

[M76]

I've already done it with the method I described.
I'd have had the same problem with extrude as well, as extrude creates 3dsolids from closed polylines, not surfaces, so I couldn't use thicken. Even if extrude didn't fail.

[lrm]

I do not know why sweep did not work for you. The primary reasons for it not working are if the polyline self-intersects or the shape to be swept is too large.

In the image below a used polygon to create a 6-sided shape and then sweep to create the solid.  Simple!

 

Can you post a sample of a polyline and shape that would not sweep successfully?

[M76]

On 9/10/2020 at 5:04 PM, lrm said:

Can you post a sample of a polyline and shape that would not sweep successfully?

If you insist.

For examlpe this line would not extrude or sweep. There is no specific shape to sweep. Everything fails.

extr.dwg

Edited September 15, 2020 by M76

[Cad64]

Extrude also failed for me on the shape in the drawing. The error message says there is a self intersecting curve. But after I copied the shape and tried Extrude again, it worked. I don't know why the original shape won't extrude but the copy will. So that's strange.