Importing and Cleaning up a Sketch

No easy solution, but what usually helps is to select chain. When it gets to a spot with a gap or multiple lines, it stops and you can zoom in to see what's going on. Sometimes you need to take a line out to break the loop before it will show you what you need to see.

WT

One thing I do to minimize the gaps is try and convert my DWG/DXF sketch into a polyline (or series of them) before I import the sketch into SW. AutoCAD and the DWG Editor have a tool for this, Type PEDIT at the command line and follow the steps. This technique works well for me most of the time but it depends greatly on the quality of the DWG/DXF file (how well it was drawn)and the complexity of the sketch(s).

Don't take the line out, just temporarily convert it to a construction line. It acts like a break in the chain. When you find the problem, convert it back. (Ed Eaton's solution, not mine.)

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Often I find that it is more efficient to import the sketch and just use it as a "sandbox" of entities to reference when creating a new sketch on top of it. (Searching for improperly trimmed, missing or redundant entities can be far too time consuming.)

On a sketch plane parallel to the imported one, new entities can be drawn and constrained to the underlying ones or converted (to be on edge) for example.

Wayne's suggestion of making a "chain" selection can be helpful while picking a series of underlying entities to convert...

Per O. Hoel

All good thoughts - that's why I like this place!

WT

Thank everyone!

Great suggestions... I am off to work now!

Aron

Lots of good suggestions so far, but here are a few more:

1) Tools>sketch tools> check sketch for feature. It will take you through problems in a sketch one by one (you have to fix the current one before it will show you the next one). You can also access this function by going to extrude and hitting the check box - it will launch your right in.

2) Get into contour select mode. If the sketch isn't valid, it will launch you into contour select when you go to the extrude dialog. By paying attention to the regions that highlight you can find the open contours really quickly (then use the select chain trick Jerry mentioned)

3) If you have a sketch with closed contours that are messed up because they contain multiple overlapping lines, the contour select tool doesn't care. I saw a good session at SWx world that used contour select to avoid fixing an imported sketches. Just select the contours to use and move on (disclaimer - I personally don't trust/feel warm to the contour select function, but it's there is you want to use it and I iamgine that many use it to great success)

Good luck

-Ed