.liml of entirely line2 elements with I-Beam Material Components to .stl file

brandonman

Hey all!
I have a project that is comprised entirely of line2 elements connecting various nodes in 3d space. These various line2 elements belong to different components. Different components have different I-Beam or circular tube profiles for their material properties, along with respective material properties.

Is there any way to generate a .stl or similar file from these? With loads and constraints, upon solving, I can clearly see that the I-Beams and circular tube profiles are THERE and that Mecway knows their configuration, as they are distinctly rendered when viewing the color coded stresses, etc in the GUI.

As it stands, when I do a ctrl-a to select all elements, and then conduct an automesh 2D or 3D, I end up with an Error at the Components and Materials level, saying "The model has no elements", and then nothing visible in the 3d space. Similarly, I get nothing in the .stl file.

There's something fundamental that I'm missing here. I'm confident that this isn't a Mecway "issue". What am I doing wrong? If this issue isn't immediately apparent from my description (I suspect it is), I can trim down my model to provide an example. Sorry if this is a dumb question. Google search results have been getting worse, and worse, and worse over the past 5 years or so, and I just couldn't find a relevant thread.

brandonman

For a bit more clarification: I can get this to something like FreeCAD as a collection of the nodes, but I can't get the profile of the "line2" elements carrying along their cross-sections (i.e. I-Beam of a x b x t x N for elements 1-XXXX)

Victor

Hello brandonman. Unfortunately, the 3D shapes of beam elements are only there for display and there's no way to export them.