Rob:
I was a little pressed for time yesterday when I responded to your query, and did not really send the message that I was trying to express.
Firstly an IGES exporter (in my opinion) would be a really signifigant milestone in Blenders evolution. It would contribute signifigantly to making the program credible in the industrial community. If you really intend to chase this ghost, I applaud you and will help you where I can. If you have some sample files that you would like me to translate (as best I can) feel free to send them to me at [email protected] and I will see what I can do with them.
There must be a whitepaper somewhere explaining the file structure, there are hundreds of applications that use it, but I was scuppered searching the internet for it. Had I continued my next stop would have been the library at a good engineering school.
…But
You say that you would use Blender for your more “artistic” designs. Let’s say that during the arduous process of researching and writing this exporter, the creative side of your brain did not shrivel up turn black and cause you to limp and speak with a southern accent…what have you really got pragmaticly? Now you can output NURBS surfaces, which you could get at by converting to mesh anyhow, and profiling to a NURBS surface is really problematic! IGES (or STEP) will not support metaballs, surfaces deformed with lattices, RVKs ect. All of the stuff that really allows you to make “Art” with Blender. Big can of worms . Certainly a process that will run into years to see thru, during which time you make no chips.
Great! now I’ve gone from terse to preachy…sorry.
This thread is supposed to be about IGES export, and if Ton or any other decision makers are reading here, that would be a REAL good thing!
If you are just trying to make Gcode from Blender , I have some python script that I will be glad to share that do that nicely. Including NURBS surfaces, Meta-anythings, beziers with width, lattice and other deformations, clamping and gouging 100% “look around” & end loops for high speed machining.
These are the IGES Entity Number descriptions:
106
Copious Data (Forms 20-21, 31-38, 40)
123
Direction
124
Transformation Matrix (Forms 10-12)
125
Flash
130
Offset Curve
132
Connect Point
134
Node
136
Finite Element
138
Nodal Displacement and Rotation
140
Offset Surface
141
Boundary
143
Bounded Surface
146
Nodal Results
148
Element Results
150
Block
152
Right Angular Wedge
154
Right Circular Cylinder
156
Right Circular Cone Frustum
158
Sphere
160
Torus
162
Solid of Revolution
164
Solid of Linear Extrusion
168
Ellipsoid
180
Boolean Tree
182
Selected Component
184
Solid Assembley
186
Manifold Solid B-Rep Object
190
Plane Surface
192
Right Circular Cylindrical Surface
194
Right Circular Conical Surface
196
Spherical Surface
198
Toroidal Surface
202
Angular Dimension
204
Curve Dimension
206
Diameter Dimension
208
Flag Note
210
General Label
212
General Note
213
New General Note
214
Leader
216
Linear Dimension
218
Ordinate Dimension
220
Point Dimension
222
Radius Dimension
228
General Symbol
230
Sectioned Area
302
Associativity Definition
304
Line Font Definition
306
Macro Definition
310
Text Font Definition
312
Text Display Template
316
Units Data
320
Network Subfigure Definition
322
Attribute Table Definition
402
Associativity Instance
404
Drawing
406
Property
410
View
416
External Reference
418
Nodal Load
420
Network Subfigure Instance
422
Attribute Table Instance
430
Solid Instance
502
Vertex
504
Edge
508
Loop
510
Face
514
Shell