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SDRC (I-DEAS) to GIG Converter

Purpose

The SDRC (I-DEAS) to GIG Converter is a program that can be used to convert I-DEAS models to files in GIG's Intercol format. When installed, the converter is an integral part of the I-DEAS software, and directly accessible from the I-DEAS menu system by chosing the GIG Exporter.

Note that the SDRC (I-DEAS) to GIG Converter does not plug into GIG. You do not even need to have a GIG installed on the same machine that SDRC and the Converter tool are on.

Introduction

SDRC I-DEAS is a high-end Computer Aided Engineering system with tools for solid and surface modeling, FEM analysis, numerical control and much more. It is used in the field of Mechanical Engineering.
GIG is a high-end Visualisation and Animation system. It is based on a high performance raytracer, and is equipped with modules for CSG modeling, NURBS modeling, animation and much more.
The GIG Exporter is a software tool that converts I-DEAS parts towards GIG. Now I-DEAS users can create astonishing images of their products, while GIG users have a very powerful modeler on hand.
This manual page covers the installation and use of the GIG Exporter, and offers hints on how to make the best use of it.

The GIG Exporter

The GIG Exporter is an I-DEAS Master Series Open Architecture program. It is a separate program that must be started from within I-DEAS. When started, a user interface window is opened. The GIG Exporter needs I-DEAS for data access, so it can only function when I-DEAS is running. The GIG Exporter converts all surfaces in the True Boundary Representation of an I-DEAS part to GIG. This means that the resulting GIG file is a collection of trimmed and untrimmed NURBS surfaces. The color of the surfaces is also exported. However this is done on a "solid" base, so when different surfaces of a part in I-DEAS have different colors, they will not have different colors in GIG.

There are two possible options to install the GIG Exporter: A local installation or a system-wide installation. Local installation means that all the necessary files are stored in one directory, the directory where the conversions will take place. In this way, the GIG Exporter can only be used when I-DEAS is started from this directory. System-wide installation allows anyone to use the GIG Exporter, regardless of the directory I-DEAS was started from. The current version of the GIG Exporter was build for I-DEAS Master Series 4.0 or higher, and may only be used with this version. The GIG Exporter uses the following files:

gigexport.exe	the executable  		~/utils/
geomod.icn      I-DEAS interface file	   	~/lib/scriptsdrc/
ideasoastart.sh I-DEAS interface file		~/lib/scriptsdrc/

After a normal installation of GIG 3DGO or GIGVIZ, the executable can be found in the 'utils' directory. The I-DEAS interface files are in the 'lib/scriptsdrc' directory. You will have to copy these files to a place where I-DEAS can access them; this is described below for both local and system-wide installations.
In some cases it will be necessary to change the permissions for the executable, with

chmod 04775 gigexport.exe

Prerequisites for using the GIG Exporter

To install and use the GIG Exporter, you should have the following:

An I-DEAS Master Series installation with MS version 4.0 or higher.
The GIG Exporter version 1.0 or higher, consisting of the three files named above.
An installed password to use I-DEAS.

This is enough to convert models into GIG readable format (you do not need a GIG password for the converter anymore). To actually use and view the model within GIG, you also need:

A GIG installation with GIG 3DGO version 3.2 or GIGVIZ.
An installed password to use GIG (3DGO 3.2 or GIGVIZ).

The GIG Exporter is compatible with MS 4.0 and GIG 3.2. It can work with earlier versions of both I-DEAS and GIG, but such is not officially supported. Compatibility with newer versions is based on the statements about upward compatibility from both SDRC and ELECTROGIG. Always check out the version information that comes with your GIG Exporter.

Installing the GIG Exporter locally

In a local installation, I-DEAS must be started from the directory where all files are placed. It is convenient to create a separate directory for this purpose. Assume that GIG has been installed under the account gig and that SDRC has been installed under the account ideas.
First create the directory. For example:

cd ~ideas
mkdir gig_export

Secondly put the GIG Exporter files in this directory:

cp ~gig/utils/gigexport.exe ~ideas/gig_export/
cp ~gig/lib/scriptsdrc/geomod.icn ~ideas/gig_export/
cp ~gig/lib/scriptsdrc/ideasoastart.sh ~ideas/gig_export/

Now when you start I-DEAS from this directory then there should be an Export to GIG option in the File menu.

Installing the GIG Exporter system-wide

When the GIG Exporter should be available to more than one person, it is better to make a system-wide installation. However this type of installation will take a little more work. First of all, you should determine if this is the first OA (Open Architecture) application you are using. Second, you should make sure that no one is using a modified version of geomod.icn, the User Interface definition for the Solid Modeler.

First OA application

Copy the file ideasoastart.sh to ~ideas/ms4/oarun/ideassiteoastart.sh. Make sure you don't overwrite the existing ideasoastart.sh in this directory!
Next modify the file ~ideas/ms4/ideas/ideas.com file and add the following lines:

OA_SITE_START_FILE=3D$SDRC_INSTL/oarun/ideassiteoastart.sh
export OA_SITE_START_FILE

These lines should be placed before the line that reads:

StartOA

Now create a directory ~ideas/ms4/gig_export. Put the file gigexport.exe in this directory.

Modify the file ~ideas/ms4/oarun/ideassiteoastart.sh and replace ./gigexport.exe with ~ideas/ms4/gig_export/gigexport.exe or the directory where you chose to put the GIG Exporter in.

Finally move the file ~ideas/ms4/geo/geomod.icn to ~ideas/ms4/geo/geomod.icn.orig and put your geomod.icn in this directory.

Not the first OA application

Check out which file is your OA_SITE_START_FILE: use a /bin/sh, and execute:

. setup_varbs

Then print the system variable OA_SITE_START_FILE. Modify this file using the contents of ideasoastart.sh found in the GIG Exporter distribution.

Next create a directory ~ideas/ms4/gig_export. Put the file gigexport.exe in this directory.

Modify the file ~ideas/ms4/oarun/ideassiteoastart.sh and replace ./gigexport.exe with ~ideas/ms4/gig_export/gigexport.exe or the directory where you chose to put the GIG Exporter in.

Finally move the file ~ideas/ms4/geo/geomod.icn to ~ideas/ms4/geo/geomod.icn.orig and put your geomod.icn in this directory.

Using the GIG Exporter

The GIG Exporter is very easy to use. One of the benefits of a NURBS-based interface is that it doesn't need any tuning or entity mapping. Essentially, exporting a part is a procedure of selecting a part and naming a file.

To use the GIG Exporter, I-DEAS should be up and running in one of the Design tasks. Any part you want to export should be on the workbench. Start the GIG Exporter with File, Export to GIG. The GIG Exporter window should appear. It can be active as long as you are using I-DEAS. The GIG Exporter has three buttons:

Select Part: starts the exporting process. This is explained below.
Help: offers some on-line help on the GIG Exporter.
Quit: stops the GIG Exporter. This should be done if you decide not to export any parts.

To export a part, use the following procedure:

Press the Select Part button. A message Pick part to export appears in the I-DEAS List window.
After you have selected a part, a file selection box appears where you can select a filename and location for your gig-file.
Pressing the OK button starts the exporting process. This process may take some time, depending on the size and the complexity of the part.
When the GIG Exporter is done, a message window appears with information on the output filename, number of surfaces and trimming curves written. If a write error occurred (for example if you did not have write permission for the directory you chose) then a warning will be displayed instead.
The message window can be closed with OK.
When the output file has been written, the GIG exporter program will stop. If you decide you do not want to use the GIG Exporter, you can use the Quit button to stop the program. Make sure that you quit the program before you quit I-DEAS, as it might generate annoying errors when I-DEAS is stopped.

If you select the File, Export to GIG option, but the GIG Exporter window does not appear:

Perhaps you are using an old version of the exporter that requires a password: please check that you installed the gigexport.exe for the correct platform, from a release 3.2 (or later) CD.
Perhaps you forgot to set the permission of gigexport.exe to executable.
On some HP installations there are some shared libraries that can be in the wrong directory. Check if there is an I-DEAS error file, and whether it complains about a missing library (i.e. /usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/lib/libXmu.sl).
In this case you will have to repair the link yourself. To do this, log in as root, and find the libXmu.sl file and link it to the position indicated in the error file.

Importing a part into GIG

The next step is to import the part into GIG. The output file should be written (or later copied) to a directory where GIG can find it. The file is in GIG's Intercol format, and should therefore go to one of the intlib directories. This can either be ~gig/lib/intlib or ~gig/projects/my_prj/intlib. The file name must have the extension .int (in lower case).

Example

Assuming the user is currently in the directory where the Intercol file is stored, the Intercol file has the name test.int and the user's project is named 'convert', then the following command has to be executed:

cp test.int ~gig/projects/convert_prj/intlib

The intlib directory of the currently active project could also be accessed using the environment variable LD:

Example

mv test.int $LD

This command will move the file test.int to the intlib directory of the currently active project.

When this is done, GIG can be started with startgig. Choose Channels and push the get intercol button. You will see the usual dialog for choosing files. The reading of the file may take some time, again depending on the size and complexity of the part. When the file is read, the imported part should appear on the screen.

Comments

It will happen very often that the part you imported looks very small in the GIG window. This is because normally you use millimetres or inches as units in I-DEAS, while GIG uses meters. Scaling with a factor of 50-200 will solve this problem.

Another strange thing is that the wireframe part on your screen does not look like your I-DEAS part. This is because it is exported as a NURBS model, and GIG shows the control polygon of the untrimmed NURBS surface in wireframe (and flat shaded) mode. When rendering the image, your part will look like it did in I-DEAS.

One restriction to the GIG Exporter is that it will only export the part's color to GIG. All other surface attributes are lost during exporting. GIG offers many more attribute settings than I-DEAS, so you should always check the attributes.

When you want to export more than one part to GIG, do the following:

Place all the parts to be exported on your workbench.
Make sure all parts are at the right place and orientation.
Export them one by one to different Intercol files.
In GIG, read a part, give it a tag, and save the solid. Do this for all parts.
Finally, make one great union of all the saved solids.

As you tag all the different parts, modifying the attributes later is very easy. You can always jump right to the part you are looking for and change its attributes.
Do not size the parts until you have all your parts in GIG. Do a Fix Solid, and then scale your part(s) to a better size. Otherwise you might forget one part or use a wrong scale anywhere along the road. A special hint for experienced I-DEAS users: When you want to have a different look at the part(s), change the camera, and do not rotate your part with the transform menu.

There are advantages and disadvantages to the fact that the GIG Exporter is a NURBS based interface. As a NURBS interface, it uses an industry standard geometry entity for conversion. NURBS surfaces offer high precision. I-DEAS is a NURBS-based modeler, and GIG knows about NURBS, so no special translations are required for the GIG Exporter to successfully export information from I-DEAS to GIG.
A downside of exporting NURBS is that all parts, surfaces etc. are exported as NURBS, even when they might also be treated as CSG primitives. A cube for example will not be converted as a cube, but as six (untrimmed) NURBS surfaces. When you need real fast ray-tracing, you might consider making a mix of I-DEAS and GIG modeling.

Unexpected appearance of Nurbs models in GIG
SDRC uses B-spline or Nurbs surfaces to carry its data to GIG. The default representation of Nurbs in the GIG interface is the Nurbs control polygon. This polygon often does not resemble the actual shape of the object. Choosing another display mode will show a better representation of the Nurbs.

In some cases, a Nurbs object will be regarded as 'solid' when it should be 'hollow' or the other way around. For example, a hollow cylinder in SDRC might appear as a solid cylinder, with end planes, in GIG. In this case you can toggle the solid/hollow box in the solid construct menu for each individual Nurbs object.

Large CAD files

Sometimes a CAD model that has been converted to Intercol format produces a model that is too large for the standard configuration of GIG. In these cases, stack overflow error messages can appear while reading the Intercol file. Usually, this can be solved by copying a configuration file with larger configuration values to your home directory. This will cause GIG to require more swapspace. The large configuration file should not be necessary for Intercol files of less than 10 MB.

Example

Assuming the user is currently in the GIG home directory, then the following command has to be executed:

cp lib/intlib/confile.big confile

Restart GIG and read the Intercol file as described above.

See also
get intercol, confile.