Tips on Importing Wavefront Files
The Wavefront file is unitless even though most of the ViewPoint graphics internally use one hardcoded unit system. You will need to scale the vertices to make them fit the units set in the Adams/View model. For example, if the Viewpoint graphics were originally created using the length unit, mm, then, if your Adams/View session units are in meters, you’ll use a scale factor of .001.
You may find that you need to experiment with different scale factors to create a model that contains practical scales. To experiment with the different scale factors, just undo the import if it does not work using the Undo command.
Before importing the graphics, create a dummy part to which you’ll attach the Wavefront graphics. Creating dummy parts is helpful because the orientation within the Viewpoint dataset is usually different than the orientation of your model. Dummy parts provide an easy method of moving and rotating the graphics to match your ADAMS model. To move the graphics, you just move the dummy part.
Here is a procedure for ensuring that the geometry is attached to the correct part:
1. From the View menu, select Part, and select the dummy part to view.
2. Rename each shell so that it belongs to the correct part.
Different shells start disappearing from the dummy part while in View Part Only mode.
3. After renaming all the geometry, delete the dummy part.
4. Display the model.
Now you have the model with different graphics elements attached to correct parts and at correct locations and orientations.
A convenient way to read in an entire Viewpoint dataset and avoid some of the problems mentioned earlier is to reduce the number of group names in the dataset before importing it into Adams/View.
Generally, groups in the Wavefront file become parts in Adams/View. If a part already exists that has the same name as a group, however, the graphics simply attach to the existing part without creating a new part. If Adams/View finds a group with no corresponding part, it creates a new part for the group.
If you have multiple groups with the same name in the Wavefront file, all groups attach to the same Adams/View part but become separate geometric entities. This allows you to use different colors within the same ADAMS part to create more realistic images.
The only lines that are significant in the Wavefront file are the ones that begin with g (groups), f (facets), and v (vertex). Adams/View ignores everything else.
To reduce the number of group names, open the dataset in a text editor and substitute names before importing the set into Adams/View. For example, a car body dataset typically has the following group names:
g hood
g fender
g windows
g bumper
Change them to the same name so they attach to a single part. For example:
g body
g body
g body
g body
 
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