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Separating surfaces from objects that have been combined during translation from a CAD Program

Question

I have an optical system for which the file is generated in a mechanical CAD program. I imported the system into TracePro from a Step file. The result being that the whole system became a single object. Is it possible to consolidate a few surfaces into one object, such that I can define the material property for each part? Also, am I able to delete some surfaces from this imported file?

Synopsis

Separating surfaces from objects that have been combined during translation from a CAD Program

Solution

There is no way to separate an object into several objects or to delete surfaces from an object in TracePro. The combining into one object occurred in the CAD program when the STEP file was created. You may be able to fix this on the CAD side by separating the pieces into separate objects. If not, you can edit the original CAD file and save each object one at a time as a separate STEP file. Each STEP file can be opened in TracePro, and the objects can then be cut-and-pasted into a single TracePro file.