aocxchange 0.2.0

Read/write to/from CAD files

The aoc-xchange project provides a Python package named aocxchange to read and write from/to IGES, STEP and STL files using PythonOCC.

aocxchange can also read 2D foil section definition files (.dat files)

PythonOCC is a set of Python wrappers for the OpenCascade Community Edition (an industrial strength 3D CAD modeling kernel)

Warning

aocxchange can import STEP, IGES and STL files. Beware that the import of a similar looking geometry from different file types might (and very likely will) lead to a different topology.

For example, the import of 2 distinct solids (closed boxes) will lead to:

• undistinguishable faces from an IGES file

• 2 separate solids from a STEP file

• 2 separate closed shells from a STL file

If working with solids, prefer STEP; you might get away with STL but it will involve extra effort

If working with surfaces, any file type will do. However, remember that STEP and IGES geometry is mathematically defined while STL basically stores a bunch of triangles approximating the geometry (which is absolutely fine and even desirable in some cases).

install

pip install aocxchange

Dependencies

aocxchange depends on OCC >=0.16 and aocutils. The examples require wx>=2.8 (or another backend (minor code modifications required)). Please see the table below for instructions on how to satisfy the requirements.

package	version	Comment
OCC	>=0.16.	See pythonocc.org or github.com.tpaviot/pythonocc-core for instructions or conda install -c https://conda.anaconda.org/dlr-sc pythonocc-core
aocutils	latest	pip install aocutils –upgrade
wx	>=2.8	See wxpython.org for instructions

Goal

The goal of the aocxchange package is to simplify the read/write of CAD files using PythonOCC.

Versions

occdataexchange version and target PythonOCC version

aocxchange version	PythonOCC version
0.1.*	0.16.2

Examples

The examples are in the examples folder at the Github repository (https://github.com/floatingpointstack/aoc-xchange).

The wx backend (wxPython) backend is used for the examples that display a UI. You may easily change this behaviour to use pyqt4 or PySide by changing the backend in the call to init_display().