CAD drawing assistance

[Brett]

Hi,

I'm hoping there are some CAD experienced people out there who might be able to help solve this for me.

I have drawn a plot of 400 points which reperesent a complex curve. The point values were calculated in a spreadsheet. I simply entered them as a set of x,y co-ordinates, manually, one at a time. However, I need them to be a line and I thought there was a function for this. The cheeseball Turbocad program I'm using may not have it, but I have a friend with AutoCAD (unsure which version, but recent. Makes a living drawing houses etc with it) whom I cam email the .dxf to, and have the curve made and then printed if possible.

Suggestions, hints, anything gladly accepted, as I'm on a really tight deadline for this.

Thanks!

 

[george a]

Autocad can accept dxf files
your freind should be able to import them.
Good luck

 

[Brett]

Thanks George.

I know AutoCAD will accept .dxf's, but what function do you use to make the curve from the points? My friend is a whizz at architechtural type drawings, but by her own admission doesn't know all the functions, and I don't want to draw a blank when we try to do it tomorrow morning.

Cheers

 

[LaMa]

Search in the help for "curves (spline curves)" (search index) It seems that autocad can fit a curve on existing points. My knowledge however is also limited to straightforward functions (I'm a civil engineering student)

 

[Pjotr]

Did you do a search on the web with Google at “curve+fitting” ? There are many shareware programs out there to do the job.

 

[dice45]

Brett,

plain AutoCAD does not have that but the LISP routines I wrote to make my AutoCAD work easier contain just what you need.
I use AutoCAD often as a curve plotter for tabulars with xyz coordiantes or for mathematical functions. If my tube tester makes to reality one day, i intend to have AutoCAD do the curve plotting for me.

Suggestion:
You mail me your file with your mathematical function or value tabular and do the plotting for you and mail you an AutoCAD file back.
Oh, make sure to use the same unit scaling for x y z.

 

[Brett]

Thanks Bernhard

You have mail.

Regards
Brett

 

[jan.didden]

Hi,

I'm hoping there are some CAD experienced people out there who might be able to help solve this for me.

I have drawn a plot of 400 points which reperesent a complex curve. The point values were calculated in a spreadsheet. I simply entered them as a set of x,y co-ordinates, manually, one at a time. However, I need them to be a line and I thought there was a function for this. The cheeseball Turbocad program I'm using may not have it, but I have a friend with AutoCAD (unsure which version, but recent. Makes a living drawing houses etc with it) whom I cam email the .dxf to, and have the curve made and then printed if possible.

Suggestions, hints, anything gladly accepted, as I'm on a really tight deadline for this.

Thanks!

Brett, I may miss something, but if you say you calculated them in a spreadsheet, did you mean Exel? If so, is there a reason not to draw the curve anyway you like in Exel and using it whenever whereever you need?

Jan Didden

 

[Brett]

Re: Re: CAD drawing assistance

Brett, I may miss something, but if you say you calculated them in a spreadsheet, did you mean Exel? If so, is there a reason not to draw the curve anyway you like in Exel and using it whenever whereever you need?

Jan Didden

Hi Jan,

The curve was calculated using an Excel macro that I didn't write. It also doesn't function fully using Lotus 123, but does give the correct values in a table. The original author did generate a script file function to draw the curves into Autocad, but 123 mangles it. I need the template in a .dxf so the company that is cutting the template generated from it can do so. They won't accept anything else.

Cheers

 

[Claus]

Shot me a email with our points and I´ll send a dxf back
Claus

 

[Brett]

Thank you!

A hearty thanks to everyone who offered to help me with this problem, and especially to Bernhard and Claus for actually providing solutions. The drawings are being printed now, and will be off to the woodturner's later this morning.

Cheers!

 

[PedroPO]

make a text file with something like this:


PLINE
0,.8017
.1,.79456
.2,.7875226
.3,.780588
.4,.7737561
.5,.767027
.6,.7604007
.7,.753877

save it with *.scr extension.

load it in autocad with osnap off with the command "script", and there you go!

please feel free to ask anything from autocad, because I master the beast.

 

[dicamillo]

I know this is an old thread, but i'll try anyway

I have almost the same problem, but my coordinates (x and y) are in 2 columns in Excel, so anybody an idea how i can convert these coordinates to a continue line in CAD????

(sorry for my English, Dutch is my natural language)

Thanks a lot !!!!

 

[Ron E]

... my coordinates (x and y) are in 2 columns in Excel, so anybody an idea how i can convert these coordinates to a continue line in CAD????

Save the spreadsheet as a *.csv (comma separated variable) file. Then do what Pedro shows. above: add the word pline at the top and add a blank line at the bottom. Then save the csv file as a *.scr file. Then at the autocad command line type scr<enter> and use the dialog box to navigate to your just created scr file. Voila, you have a polyline which connects all of the points.

You can make the curve smooth by using more points or by using the pedit command and turning it into a spline - you may want to turn a copy of the line into a spline and compare it to the original, because depending on spacing, the spline can sometimes be a bit off