Software to Convert Mechanical Desktop Solid Models into Facet Files for Input to Xpatch

Mechanical Desktop, a solid modeling program from AutoDesk, offers engineers a powerful environment for designing ground combat vehicles. To predict the radar signatures of concept vehicles created in Mechanical Desktop, the geometry and material properties of the vehicles must be fed into Xpatch. Mechanical Desktop, however, lacks an output file format that is directly useable by Xpatch. In this paper, we discuss the problems associated with converting Mechanical Desktop files into a suitable facet format, and we present a procedure for carrying out the conversion. Moreover, we describe new software required to perform a key step in this conversion. The conversion of an example of Mechanical Desktop solid models illustrates the procedure and the new software.