CAD conversion software review
I use Solidworks as my main parametric drawing program but I am looking for 3rd party software for import / export of various CAD formats. Unfortunately I find the Featureworks import function leaves a lot to be desired and requires intensive editing after the fact.
The question is :
1/ Are there proper tutorials to streamline this process to address import issues and produce economic tasking of features? Where to find some recommended tutorials.
2/ Has anyone used 3rd party software ( ie. "CAD Exchanger GUI" or "3d-Tool" software) and have any feedback / review of these items? Do they function well or require a lot of model editing?
Feedback on this subject is greatly appreciated to determine path forward : Regards M.Bruton
Accepted answer
Hi Mark, i have to deal daily with different CAD-Inputs from many different sources in automotive industry. What i have experienced so far, is that not every interpreter / importer works the same way as the other one. I usually use 3 instances to check the delivered geometry. If all of those 3 have the same interpretation, than i can say that the Product is good/bad. Even if everyone say, STP is allright, it depends where that STP file came from (SolidW, Catia, Rhino etc). So my definition is, STP is not STP.
To answer your need, for one translating 3d parity software, I would suggest you, to try SAP Visual Author (former deep Exploration). It covers the most industry standards and it can export as a STP file, which i have only good experiences with. I also have very good results with Rhino.
Hope this helps.
Agon
1 Other answer
I would say it depends on your intended use for the geometry you're importing or exporting. Going on 20 years now and I've honestly never had a situation where I wanted or needed imports from a customer to be parametric, and only on very rare occasion am I asked by a customer for native CAD files, let alone parametric native CAD files, which I am loathe to give, not to be secretive, but parametric CAD files by their very nature are houses-of-cards, and easily broken by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, and that can quickly become a you-know-what contest.
Most of us, customer, supplier, and designer alike, are more interested in a cleanly imported dumb solid than something that whiz-bangs itself into a parametric model, at least with regards to models of moderate and higher complexity.
Your specific needs may be wildly different, but that's been my experience working mostly with new product development efforts.
