Reduce Weight

This program can be useful when you design plywood or MDF products for exhibition stands, interior design, offices, shops. Often there is a need to reduce the weight of structures. To do this, you can cut out the extra parts of the supporting invisible structures, that is, make windows in the middle of the parts. Or make pockets on the inner invisible sides of the parts. Usually the process of designing such windows is long and inconvenient. It is necessary to get the outer contour of the part, offset the contour inside the part, extrude the 3D-solid and subtract it from the part. The matter can be complicated due to the need to keep the dadoes and holes in the attachment points with other parts. And it is also necessary to leave jumpers so that the windows do not turn out to be too long, and the entire assembly retains its rigidity. But all these problems can be solved in 1 click. You only need to call the Reduce Weight command (ReduceW) and it will do all this work with all the selected parts.

Program features:

• The program can cut windows both in rectangular parts, and in arcuate parts and in parts of arbitrary shape.

• You can make through windows or pockets of a given depth.

• It doesn't matter how your parts are arranged in space. In any case, the program will lay them out in XY plane (as the LAY command does), process them and return them to their place.

• The program itself will choose the side in which it is necessary to make a pocket. This will be the side with the smaller area (which has blind holes and slots). But you can mark the front of the part with a color so that the program does not disfigure this side.

• You can select many parts at once, and even the entire assembly. You just have to wait a bit and pray that the AutoCAD engine does not glitch.

• You can select blocks (assemblies) and the program itself will find and process all the solids inside the blocks. And inside nested blocks too.

• The program always ignores solids and blocks on the Annotations, Hatching, Axes, Other, Info, Excluding, Holes and Fixture layers. But you can filter objects by layers, by technology, and by material type.

• The program will not make windows too small if they are smaller than the given offset and do not make sense for weight reduction.

• The program will take into account the presence of inclined ends, grooves, dadoes and drillings and will not delete them, but will leave the part material around them with a specified offset.

• If the hole is made in the center of the part, then the program will reach one jumper to it, preserving the integrity of the part. But if you need 2 jumpers from each island, then you will have to model the second jumpers manually.

• The program will check the size of the resulting windows, and if they are larger than the limit you set, the program will add a rectangular grid of jumpers (stiffeners).

• You can set up to 9 program styles and quickly switch them right from the command line.

Program restrictions:

• The program only works with 3D solid models (Solid3d), does not work in 2d and does not work with polygonal meshes and surfaces.

• The program is designed to work with parts made of flat sheet materials. It has nothing to do with mechanical details and complex three-dimensional shapes. It is not possible to use the program for curved skins.

• The program may not be able to handle overly complex shapes. On parts with an excessive number of holes and dadoes, important elements can be removed. Be sure to carefully check the result. Remember that any automatic program always requires human intervention and will never replace the brain of an engineer.

• The shape of the window is not subject to any simplifications or rounding. On additive parts, the window can look very complicated. The program is designed for the window to be cut by the CNC machine and does not care about the complexity of the form, and weight savings is more important than the number of G-codes in CNC-program.

• AutoCAD and BricsCAD remove coloring of solid faces during any processing, including the work of this program. Assign materials to surfaces and edges only after modeling is complete.

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.

Then you can activate one of the licenses:

• Annual license - 10 EUR.

• Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.

• The trial period is 20 days.

Operating procedure

You can pre-configure the program. To do this, open the A>V>C> options palette (AvcOptions) on the Reduce Weight tab.

Select the parts to be machined or the entire assembly. And call the ReduceW command.

If nothing is selected in advance, the program will prompt you to select the details. On the command line you will see the options

• SwitchStyle - quickly switch between program styles

• Tune - open the settings dialog

If blocks are selected, the program will add all the solids from them to the processing list. As well as solids from nested blocks. But scaled blocks will be ignored.

Some selected objects will be discarded (filtered). Ignores solids and blocks from Annotations, Hatching, Axes, Other, Info, Excluding, Holes and Fixture layers. You can reconfigure the object filter as you wish. It is possible to exclude solids not only by layers, but also by manufacturing technology, by type of material. Messages about the reasons for filtering objects will be displayed on the command line.

Next, the program will lay out the parts one by one in the XY plane, measure and analyze them, process the parts and put them in place.

If you get such a window outline that AutoCAD cannot extrude into a solid, then the program will save this outline as a red object of the Region type. You can try to draw and subtract it yourself.

If there are many details, you will see a progress indicator.

The program can be interrupted by pressing ESC.

At the end of the work, the program will show on the command line how many parts were processed and how many could not be processed.

Watch for messages on the command line. Error messages and useful information are displayed there.

Program settings

To customize the Reduce Weight command, you can use the A>V>C> Options Palette (AvcOptions) on the Reduce Weight tab. Or reset the selection and call the ReduceW command with the TUNE option.

Style Name

The name for this reduce-style (set of settings). Not used in the program. Only for convenience of choice.

Offset

The width of the strip of material to be left around the edge of the part after the window has been cut. The same width is used for jumpers.

Pocket Depth

Specify how much material to remove. If you set it to 0, then the program will cut through the window. A negative value specifies the remaining material thickness after milling, and the depth will be calculated for each part as Part Thickness - |Depth|. The selection is cut from the back of the part, keeping the front side. You can help the program choose the front side with a color label.

Jumpers Step

The maximum allowed window size. If the window turns out to be larger than this size, then the program should leave a jumper for strength. Jumpers are placed in an X and Y grid on a part laid out according to the rules of the LAY command. If jumpers are not needed, then set the value to 0. But jumpers to holes and slots will be made regardless of this setting.

Selected objects filter

Filtering is needed to discard drawing objects that accidentally fall into the selection frame. It is easier to select all the objects of the model in a row, and let the program select only the necessary ones from them. Finding parts inside assembly blocks. You can read more about filtering on the Data Table page.