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]

You have mail.

Regards
Brett

[janneman]

Originally posted by 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!

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]

Originally posted by janneman


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