Advance Steel – Explode to ACIS… quick

So you need to send a 3D DWG of your Advance Steel model, but the sub-contractor doesn’t have Advance Steel. One option is to explode the Advance Steel objects to ACIS solids.

Before you explode anything…

When you explode Advance Steel objects to ACIS solids, they lose all of their Advance Steel properties. They are dumb solids. So take a copy of the file first, and then follow the process on the copied file.

NOTE: You can’t magically turn the ACIS solids back to Advance Steel intelligent objects.

The Problem

So I have had customers not wanting to use this process because it is painful selecting an object, then selecting similar, and then exploding to ACIS for all the types of elements in the model. Repeat for all of the Advance Steel object types in the model. Why such a slow method I hear you ask. Surely you can just select all of the objects in the file and explode them to ACIS all in one move.

So below I have selected just one column, and when I right mouse click you can see there is an option to explode it to an ACIS solid.

All is fine so far. But if I select all the objects in the file and then right mouse click there is often no Explode to ACIS option to pick. See the Right Mouse click menu below:

That’s because not all of the objects in the file need to be exploded. So are we forced to go back to the method I described earlier?

The Solution

Not any longer, and this is where I need to check that you are sitting down when you read this. The command that is being run when you choose the Explode to ACIS right mouse option is ASTOREXPLODETOACIS.

So the process is as easy as:

1. Take a backup of the file.
2. Check that you have a backup of the file.
3. Type the command ASTOREXPLODETOACIS
4. When it asks you to select objects type ALL.
5. You may get a message that not all objects can be exploded.

6. Hit Enter, and wait for it to do its magic.

How cool is that. Maybe I’m just a CAD geek, but I LOVE that!!