Graitec PowerPack For Advance Steel – Explode to ACIS (*.sat) File With Section Name And Quantity

This came up from a client today, they were looking for a method to export their handrailing tubes from Advance Steel into a Sat file format, so that it could be loaded into their laser profiling software.

The Graitec PowerPack for Advance Steel has this really cool tool that you can select Advance Steel objects and explode them to ACIS solids (*.sat) files, to import into other platforms.

The question was: could we control the file name for the exported file? I was given a sample format as below, so went out and did some testing.

F21_3_hss1.5X1.5X.1875.sat (F21 = Current file name and part number, _ = (separator), 11 = part quantity, _ = (separator), hss1.5X1.5X.1875 = material description)

I found that there is a field in the export dialog box which can be populated via a series of available Autodesk Advance Steel tokens to form the stringer required.

In the file name, we could add things like the single part number, the quantity and also the profile name. Normal text entries were combines with these variables to form the string required by the laser profiling software.

Selected tokens for this request combined with text entries to form the required file name.

Here is how the file name would look like for this example:

Part No F1000, Separator “_”, Quantity required 1, Separator “_”, profile name CHS114x3x3.6

Now, we can re-import the Sat file, which would look like this:

Here is a short video of how this was done, step-by-step:

If you’d like to develop your skills further, you may want to join our Autodesk Certified Advance Steel Training courses. For a quote, or to resolve any queries you may have, please get in touch with us through the link below: