Export List of Points from Openrocket?

Hello,
I am working on designing my next rocket. I have the file drawn up in OR, but I am trying to export the fins as a list of points so I can import it into Solidworks. It's about 40 points so I would rather not have to manually input them. Is there a way to export the list of points to a .csv or similar?

Thanks!
Matt

blackbrandt said:

Hello,
I am working on designing my next rocket. I have the file drawn up in OR, but I am trying to export the fins as a list of points so I can import it into Solidworks. It's about 40 points so I would rather not have to manually input them. Is there a way to export the list of points to a .csv or similar?

Thanks!
Matt

Click to expand...

What about copy and paste the x,y values into excel, and then manipulate from there? I know excel can take imported csv, maybe it can export values in csv?

Nate

I can't copy paste them... Already tried to highlight the list but it only lets me select one field at a time.

No way that I know of. Another of the 'tables' in OR that would be nice to export to use elsewhere in the rocketry world.

When I was generating some files for laser-cutting, I did the following:

1) Design in OR
2) Output fin templates to PDF
3) Import PDF into vector drawing program
4) Smooth out the curves in the drawing program

I don't know if Solidworks can pull in the PDF directly, but I'll *bet* that the drawing program can output something that Solidworks can import.

How willing are you to do a bit of scripting? The .ork file itself contains the points (at least when the fins are entered by points), but you'd have to extract it. This seems to work for me on my mac:

unzip -c /path/to/file.ork | grep "<point" | perl -ane 'print("$F[1],$F[3]\n");' -F'"' > file.csv

I found that if you have OR print the fin templates to PDF you can then import the PDF into InkScape or something similar.
You then have to Ungroup the page several times and eventually you will have individual objects.

You can open the *.ork file in notepad or any other text editor (its plain ascii xml), scroll to where the fins are defined and copy the points.

jderimig said:

You can open the *.ork file in notepad or any other text editor (its plain ascii xml), scroll to where the fins are defined and copy the points.

Click to expand...

All I get is garbage. Can you elaborate?

Same. I get a bunch of garbage opening it in Notepad++.

blackbrandt said:

Same. I get a bunch of garbage opening it in Notepad++.

Click to expand...

Oops, Sorry. Save as a *.rkt (Rocksim file) and then open with Wordpad.

the .ork file needs to be unzipped (7zip works), then you can open it in notepad.
Rex

that's something that bugged me since rocksim 2, 3.. many many years ago! And with both Rocksim & OR. that you can't export fin templates. Only print out pictures. And even then, one fin per page. No nesting or optimization. Exporting to DXF would be super sweet!

Thanks now it is working. Also the numbers in the XML ARE metric.

I wonder if someone with enough coding expertise could write a program that would read the XML data and output the fin shape as a set of points or really any type of file.

BuiltFromTrash said:

Thanks now it is working. Also the numbers in the XML ARE metric.

I wonder if someone with enough coding expertise could write a program that would read the XML data and output the fin shape as a set of points or really any type of file.

Click to expand...

Should be able to get excel do that with some vba code. Interesting idea, could possibly also reverse the process. I'll certainly be taking a look at that.

Ok here we go.

Point the attached excel spread sheet at your rocket file with free form fins and hit export.

You can also select the units of your choosing and view the results in the Fin worksheet including graph.
The complete XML from the file will be listed in the XML worksheet.

If you have multiple fins they will all be listed together I believe, not sure what will happen if there are non-free form fins.

View attachment ExtractFreeFormFins.zip

^ This should be a sticky.