Mr A FLEETWOOD
45 ANSON ROAD
RAF LOCKING
W.S.M
AVON BS24 7DG
ENGLAND
UNITED KINGDOM

DEC 1993


DESIGNCAD 3D TO GBEAM .B3E CONVERSION



What does it do, well ? it takes multiple node entity
wireframe drawings from Designcad 3D and plots the node
coordinates and elements connecting the nodes and constructs a
Gbeam B3E file, thus upto a point avoiding the need to carry out
full modelling from within 3DGbeam. See Problems.
The program allows for the complete wireframe to be
converted or you can select individual entities, you can select
the element type but for now all elements will be the same,you
can ofcourse change from within 3DGbeam this also applies to the
Material and Geometrical properties as well.
From the printout you will see that the program saves the
file to a sub directory within gbeam, you must set up the same
or edit the program, but l will not teach you to suck eggs.
Run the program from within Designcad from the command line or
include it within the drop down menu system as l have done, you
may have to play around with the setup of Designcad 3D version
4 but cannot foresee that will cause any problems.


Problem areas:

1. Once the program has run from Designcad and the .B3E file
is created, you will see from listing the file it is not an exact
image of the 3DGbeam .b3e file. But once you have recalled the
file from within Gbeam using the Model option, Quit and saved,
Gbeam will organise the file correctly.

2. On occasions recalling the file into Gbeam with the Model
option all you will see is the Triad, not sure why but think l
need to organise the B3E file from Designcad abit more, but this
problem can be quickly overcome, by selecting Model, View and
then Isometric, and the wireframe model should appear ok. It will
also be necessary to enter the Node option and use Overlap and
then Renumber, Quit and Save. All this only takes seconds so for
now it does not cause me to much problem.

3. Finally while constructing your model from within Designcad
you must model similarly as if in Gbeam else once converted some
parts of the model will be missed, this seems to be particurly
true with the way Designcad forms its solids ie a Box is made up
of two opposites points, l overcome these problems by using a
different layer and using the Snap to and Line commands to trace
the part l want, then run the program on the trace.

Well for now that is it, but for Version One, first attempt
it saves me time and provides that necessary interface between
the two programs,if your into that kind of thing.

All modifications and comments to above address many thanks.

Bye for now.



A J Fleetwood