Help Req Determining Compound Angles 1

[Sirius]

Hello there, I was wondering if any Autocad experts could help me solve a problem Im facing.........

I have been sent an Iges3d surface model of a very complicated car exhaust bracket - It is only surface data with no thickness comprising of multiple patches (its got flaws and its too complex to 'solid' stitch it).

The trouble is its orientated in 3d space to an unknown value (ie just sitting there at funny angles in 3d space with nothing 'level') and I want to be able to ask it or determine the compound angle of a face relative to "normal" ucs position.
This will hopefully bring it into line when I select 'top/front/left standard views and make it a lot easier to work on than presently manouvering the UCS everywhere and trying to line it up parrallel to 3 point entities on the model.
Whats the best way of getting this compound angle info?, and is there a simple way to level it out to 'normal' planes?.

Its very hard to explain, I hope you can understand the aim. It seems I could keep rotating it in different views forever and never get it flat(level). I think I need something like the 'mate' command, but I cant because its not a solid or 'part'.(?).

Thanks,

Sirius.

 

[9087]

If you have a flat surface on the model you can draw two reference lines, one in x or y of ucs and one on the surface plane. Then you can just align them just using the standard align command. I do this all of the time.

Regards Dan

 

[Sirius]

Cheers for that. Ill give it a go - I have never used the align command before!!!. I tried using >assembly >'mate' and >'flush' but it kept flipping the 'normal' entity up to match the compound entity - very annoying!!!!!!!!!. I wanted it to flip the compound entity to match the normal entity(if you follow). There must be someway of doing that easily in the order I want!!. Align could be the ticket.

Is there any way to ask the program the angles which make up the compound face relative to 'normal' as text, for example, ""in x = 15.6 deg, y =10.5 deg and z = 3.2 degrees"", or something like that anyway!.

Cheers,

Sirius

 

[Sirius]

God. Autocad IS the master. Thanks very much for passing on the Align command variable to me!!. Fantastic. It has saved me hours and its so easy .

Im sure it will be one to be engrained in the memory for future use!!!.

Thanks very much.


Sirius.