DXF Export to Solidworks

[gruenhir]

I have a bit of a tricky one today...

We are currently using NX6, which is obviously very outdated, and Solidworks. Most of our old stuff is all in NX6, but we're looking to be able to transfer it all to Solidworks. One option is of course to redraw everything (or outsource that work). The other option my coworker has been looking in to is to export the drawings as DXFs to be opened in Solidworks, hopefully with little repair needed. Our drawings are very detailed, with many callouts etc. so obviously we're concerned about things 'breaking' during the transfer.

Why am I here asking about this? Because we can't actually save as DXF from NX6... we get an error whenever we try. As far as we can tell this is because our version is just so old. Before we commit to getting a new license of UG just to do this transfer, we'd like to get an idea of if such a thing is even possible. Has anyone had any experience with using DXFs created in UG/NX to create drawings in Solidworks?

Thanks!

 

[NutAce]

There seems to be a plugin available for this.

3D: [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.datakit.com/cad-convertors/ug-nx-3d-to-solidworks-3d/12-ug-nx-3d-to-solidworks.html[/url]
2D: [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.datakit.com/cad-convertors/ug-nx-2d-to-solidworks-2d/170-ug-nx-2d-to-solidworks.html[/url]

Ronald van den Broek
Senior Application Engineer
Winterthur Gas & Diesel Ltd
NX9 / TC10.1.2

Building new PLM environment from Scratch using NX12 / TC11

 

[cowski]

Because we can't actually save as DXF from NX6... we get an error whenever we try. As far as we can tell this is because our version is just so old.

What does the error text say? If it is something like "server error (-18)", the DXF export license may not be available on your machine. Even though NX6 is old, it should be able to export to the version of DXF that was current at the time (assuming you have a license); computer programs don't forget how to do something if it isn't used regularly.

...obviously we're concerned about things 'breaking' during the transfer.

Depends on what you consider to be "broken". DXF is a vector format (lines, arcs, splines, text, etc) so you should get a good representation of your drawing. However, it will all be dumb geometry, not associated to the model or each other. Want to revise your drawing by adding some text and moving some callout bubbles around? You'll need to move the text around manually and do the justification yourself; if it was in a tabular note, the borders are all dumb lines now that you may need to move around to make room for the text. Want to grab a bubble and drag it to a new location? The circle, text, stub, leader, and arrow are very likely all independent entities that don't know or care about each other. DXF's will get information from one CAD system to another, but the result may not be as usable as you'd hoped.

If you just want to save a record of your current drawings, perhaps PDF would be a better choice. You'll get an accurate representation of your current drawing and there are various PDF readers, most of them free.

www.nxjournaling.com

 

[gruenhir]

NutAce -- thanks for the info, we'll look into that!

Cowski -- Does one have to have a license to have a seat? We have one seat on a remote desktop that is shared by multiple users, but (my understanding is that) we aren't up-to-date on licenses or anything, and it would cost a pretty penny to do so. Anyway the error is

"The following parts failed to save causing the overall save operation to fail:

While saving I:\[insert file location here].prt - Interrupt"

We do have PDFs of everything, we still do revisions etc. in UG. These parts are still very active and subject to modifications in the future... so dumb geometry really wouldn't work for us. ((Which I take it means NutAce's links might not help me much?))

 

[Rob_N]

Can't you open the NX files in Solidworks directly?

Our sister company uses Solidworks and they open my files.

 

[gruenhir]

Rob -- yes the .prt files can be opened as dumb solids in Solidworks. However, no drawing information is included in that and the model is completely uneditable. We have some limited success using feature recognition, but that doesn't come close to covering the amount of editability we need.

 

[looslib]

You will never get a NX drawing into Solidworks as a linked drawing back to the model. The only method is to contract some company to recreate all of your drawings that you need after importing the models into SW from NX.
The opening of a NX part into SW is reading the Parasolid data structure from teh NX file. Tere is NO drawing information contained in the Parasolid structure. All drawing information is in the NX portion of the files.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[cowski]

Based on the error message, I'd guess that you do have a license to translate to DXF. To investigate, I'd suggest checking the NX log file right after a failed DXF export attempt. The NX log file can be opened from the NX help menu; the newest entries are at the bottom, so scroll all the way down to the bottom and look through the last 20 or so lines for any mentions of errors. Sometimes the error messages are fairly plain and point directly to the problem, other times they are fairly cryptic and not much use except to the developers. Also, when NX translates a file, it generates an individual log file for the translation in the export folder. The base part of the name will match the part file name and the file extension will be ".log". If the process gets far enough along to start a log file, there might be something in there to help troubleshoot the issue.

www.nxjournaling.com