I am trying to constrain a imported iges file with in a assembly and it seems as though there are no faces on the part. I have selected the healer enabled and auto stitch and promote options when opening the file but im not sure if I need to do more. Any help or ideas are welcome or maybe Im just trying to do something that is not possible.

Thanks!!

Does your part look yellow as opposed to the default grey?

Yes it is a transparent yellow

Yellow means it's just construction surfaces - nothing to constrain to.

You need to jump through hoops and stitch/mend the surfaces so they create a solid. Or, you can import it into Solidworks, then save as a SAT file - that tends to work a lot better with IGES files.

_________________
Ron
http://www.arken.net Engineering and Design
http://www.arkenstudios.com Professional Photography

I tried the SAT save but I keep getting errors when it tries to save it out to a SAT format.

Back to the source then is probably the easiest route.
Other than that - I know SOME people can import them into MDT and use MDT's surfacing tools to stitch it back into a good solid. But I'm not one of them.

I'd recommend asking the source of the file to export a different format (STEP) - is that possible?

_________________
Ron
http://www.arken.net Engineering and Design
http://www.arkenstudios.com Professional Photography

Just yesterday I was trying to show a coworker how easy import is, he got some files from Molex or something. First IV wouldn't make a solid out of the files on import, healer was enabled. So I edited the construction geometry and did a select all stitch then promoted everything. Well it appears the original file was an assembly IV pulled in as a part, it had disjointed bodies. So now the disjointed pieces can't be promoted as solids, apparently you can only do one. So I open a second file and promoted another piece and tried to place it in an assembly with the first piece but I can't measure, project, or create work features on the construction geometry. So now I don't know where exactly to locate the new additional pieces......

OK I probably need to check a registry setting for how step assemblies are brought in etc. etc. but the point is I WAS WRONG! It really isn't easy to import data for the casual IV user.

Edit:

Ok, here's a rundown on how to change the part to a solid. I got this from my Autodesk Inventor 6 Essentials book, which by coincidence I was practicing today.

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Import the file.

In the browser, double-click on the Construction folder to activate the construction environment.

Analyze the quality of the surface before stitching and promoting it.

Click the Stitch tool.

Right-click and click Select All from the context menu to select all surface segments.

Click the Analyze button.

Click the Stitch button to close the gaps and stitch the surfaces into a quilt.

After stitching, re-analyze the surface to determine its quality.

Select the stitched surface.

Click the Analyze button.

Click Done.

Promote the surface from the Construction environment to the Part environment.

Click the Promote tool.

Select the surface.

Check the Promote as Surface box.

Click Promote.

Click Done.

Right click and select Finish Construction to exit the Construction environment and return to the Part environment.

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Hope this helps.

Now, do you want to know how to change get part from translucent just tell me.