TurboCAD Explode/Create Fragmentation?

I've recently been collaborating with some colleagues in Gauge '3' to produce a low-cost battery electric model of a 100HP Sentinel that we hope to make available in small numbers to interested parties as a "starter" engine. My part was to do the drawings and design the basic mechanicals (e.g. the easy bit!).

I've used TurboCAD for many years but my needs are generally pretty straight forward and I've never had any problems that didn't turn out to be my fault. With the Sentinel - many revisions were necessary as we discovered more details about the originals and made various design decisions and changes.

I was routinely creating 'groups' in order to assemble them but often had to 'explode' them to make changes afterwards. I discovered that my circles and arcs didn't "re-assemble" - they had been fragmented into many smaller arcs.

This gave me various problems - for instance with finding centres for 'snapping to' . I managed to generally overcome this by creating key background centre references (in another layer) but it was tiresome.

Talking to Malcolm High (of Model Engineers Laser) recently, I mentioned this in relation to exporting a DXF for laser cut parts and he told me it was a problem with TC that he saw regularly - as the laser cutter obviously couldn't manage all the little arcs which should have been a circle....

Can anyone advise whether TC is fundamentally flawed in this respect (and whether there is a fix) or if I am using the tool in the wrong way (and therefore creating my own problem). I am currently using TC Deluxe V15.

Regards,

IanT

In case anyone is interested - here is the prototype engine shown at the G3 AGM in February. Still work to do but coming along..

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 10/03/2015 10:40:41

Ian,

I think you will have better luck asking here.

http://forums.turbocad.com/

**LINK**

Hi Ian

I've spotted this problem from time to time with both TC 6 Pro and TC 20 DL.

Certainly one cause appears to be 'over-exploding', where you actually explode the entity itself into smaller segments. You will probably need to select and explode twice - all too easy to do when you're paying attention to the design itself. Suggest you draw a circle and try it. You can then re-group them back into the single entity.

There may be other causes that I'm not aware of, but the above is certainly one problem.

All the best, Roger

I think Roger is correct - you exploded too many times. I just tried combining several circles into a group, then exploding the group, and the circles remained as circles (the Selection Pallet reports them as circles). If I explode them again, Selection Pallet reports them as Polylines and they are, indeed, lots of little arcs or lines.

Roger/Gary,

Thank you for the feedback. I will experiment a little and see if I can find a way to "under" explode my drawings - or perhaps delay any grouping action and thereby minimise the risks of this occurring....

Part of the problem may have been that (in this case) I had built up quite a few small groups as I went along (modifying & changing various assemblies as I went) - and it does seem quite hard to then 'ungroup' in an orderly fashion without this fragmentation effect.

Possibly a potential weakness in TC, combined with poor process on my part, resulting in a problem

Regards,

IanT

I can't find an 'object manager' in Turbocad, such a thing* would make grouping and ungrouping easy.

Neil

*Its a window that lists all the elements of a drawing in groups and in order of what's at the front (I can imagine this doesn't work in 3D as the 'front' is subjective...)

Not a feature in the DL version as far as I know Neil - it maybe available in the (more expensive) Pro version.

I'll also do as JS suggests and go and ask the TC Forum (yet another Forum to join!) and see if they have any useful advice on the subject.

Thanks everyone.

IanT