Punch! ViaCAD v14 PowerPack for Pro

PowerPack v14 is only compatible with ViaCAD 2D/3D v14, ViaCAD Pro v14 and SharkCAD Pro v14.

PowerPack brings over 70 new tools to the existing functionality of ViaCAD. Prepare and perfect your CAD designs for 3D Printing. PowerPack offers a collection 3D printing repair tools, new modeling tools and general utilities that will increase productivity and make your existing and future designs 3D Printer ready. Example tools include auto repair for dangling vertices, stitch triangles, double and collapsed face removal, correction of simple holes, plus repair for mesh, curves, surfaces and solids, and more! Strengthen your work and increase your efficiency with PowerPack v14.

3D Printing Tools

Check, repair and validate models for 3D printing

3D Print Check

This tool checks a part for print viability, displaying warnings or errors to the user.

Surface Normals Check

Facet normals define the inside and outside areas of a part. If facet normals are pointing the wrong way, the 3D printer may have problems creating the part. If you have a normals issue, there are several commands that can help you fix this problem.

Overhang Analysis

The Overhang Analysis tool provides a means to visually inspect modeling areas that may require structural support for 3D printing. Meshes, surfaces and solids facets normals are compared to the work plane direction. Angles that are less or equal to 45 degrees are highlighted as red.

Wall Thickness

The Wall Thickness Analysis tool provides a means to visually inspect modeling areas that may be too thin for 3D printing. Meshes, surfaces, and solids facets are examined using ray intersections.

PreviewSlices

The Preview Slices tool provides a user interface to slice models given a direction and thickness. The dialog box allows for animation through the slices and single stepping. One use of the Preview Slice tool is to verify a part has closed, non-overlapping sections, a requirement for 3D printing. The Save Slices option provides several options to save slices to DXF, STL or add the results directly into your drawing.

Auto Position

The Auto Position tool translates the model to the positive x, y coordinate system at z = 0.

Support Structure

Manually adds geometry to support material as it is created by the 3D printer. Support structures controls, include Attach Radius, Midpoint Radius, Base Radius, Base Thickness and Drag base and mid points to modify structure location.

Show Printer Volume

Toggles the boundary of the default 3D Printer. The volume is defined within the Printer Definitions dialog box.

Printer Definitions

Sets key parameters of the 3D printer, including length, width and height of the volume accessible by the printer. The parameters in the Printer Definitions dialog box are used for commands such as 3D Print Check and Auto Position.

General Utilities

A collection of tools for manipulating entity attributes.

NEW Spur Gear Generator

Creates a Spur Gear based on number of teeth, module, pressure angle, clearance, and involute samples. In addition to creating the 2D curve outline of the gear, an extruded 3D solid model is added to the drawing.

NEW Mesh to Analytic to convert mesh data into precise solids

Converts manifold, water tight, facetted models into solid models with options to simplify into analytical shapes. Suitable for converting low polygon models (<100K) into solids for modeling operations as well sharing to other apps using STEP and IGES translators.

Unroll

Unroll will flatten a developable surface such as a ruled surface into a shape that lies in the XY plane.

HeightMap to 3D Mesh

The HeightMap to 3D Mesh tool will convert a 2D image into a 3D object.
The height is extracted from the color components by applying a grayscale conversion and mapping the results into a user supplied height value.

Select Same

The Select Same tool provides mask options for selecting objects including

• Shape
• Color
• Entity Type
• Line Font
• Text Font

Assorted Colors

The Assorted Colors tool assigns up to 20 colors per group of entities selected. The tool is useful for visually identifying file import and other individual parts.

AutoLayer

AutoLayer is a tool that will automatically assign an entity to a layer based on the same shape or by entity name. Use AutoLayer to help organize files imported from other applications that do not support layering.

Preview Layers

The Preview Layers utility provides a user interface to rapidly step through layers. The play button will animate through the layer start and end region. The step forward and backward buttons manually provide control through the layers.

Change File Units

There are many file formats that do not contain unit settings that include STL, OBJ, PLY, 3DS and older DXF files. The Change File Units command allows you to quickly change a file scale based on Units or Scale Factor.

Show Only By Name

The Show Only by Name tool displays just the entity with the provided name. This tool changes the Show/Hide flags of the entity.

Rename

The Rename tool provides a way to rename large number of entities. This tool is especially useful for renaming entities imported from external applications. For example, Inventor attaches the full assembly representation to the part name.

Spell Check

The Spell Check examines all visible text for possible misspellings and provides suggestions.

Isolate Layer

The Isolate Layer command sets the display layers to objects you select.

Curve, Surface, and Solid Modeling Tools

Repair profile, simplify profile, show surface free edges, remove duplicate entities, remove zero length curves, simplify solid

Mesh Tools

Mesh analysis, auto repair, show mesh free edges, remove collapsed facets, identify overlaps, remove duplicate facets, fix flipped normal, weld vertices, remove unused vertices, rebuild normal, close simple holes, rebuild normal, flip on normal, delete facets, combine, split by select, make vertices planar, remove slivers