Generating conveyor layouts from CAD

I've been asked what's involved in generating a model on the fly, from info contained in a CAD drawing - either with or without interim data prebuild/manipulation.

The CAD drawing would be the result of an automated layout sequence, done on another software application. And the requirement is to populate a Flexsim model from the output of this process.

I can see similarities to the VISIO import process, and I would imagine that the CAD file would include object data that can be used - either directly or after a translation. That's probably the easy bit.

I would imagine that building links, transporters, network paths & logic etc would be a bit trickier.

As this is (I believe) a new area, I thought I'd open it to the user community to see if anyone else is working on something similar, and if indeed it is possible.

Thank you,

Kenny
TMN Simulation
Australia

Kenny, I think this will involve the size of the conveyor and the coordinate of the conveyor. But the rest of the parameter will not be able to capture from the drawing. Currently our system is to bring in the CAD as layout and hence besides lines there is not much of the information that actually we could import in.

There is a video on automating the creation of conveyor on the youtube. I guess if we could get those geometrical and coordinate information on to the Excel, we should be able to generate the conveyor on the fly.

David

Kenny,

If you want to post a sample drawing and let me know what objects/information you are trying to get out and what you would like to do with it then I can see what I can do. You could also send the file to me directly if you can't post it. I'm on a project right now so I might not get back to you on this really quickly.

Brandon

Thanks Brandon, file has been requested.