File conversion from Inventor to Solidwork

[RegnadKcin]

Does anyone know of a method or 3rd party software that will convert the data in an Inventor part file to SolidWorks and retain data such as material properties, custom properties, etc? Step file. iges, etc. conversion seems to eliminate this data.

 

[tgrimley]

What happens when you open the *.ipt in Solidworks?

 

[RegnadKcin]

Opening an .ipt in Solidworks is like opening a STEP file. It comes in as an imported file. All of the information is lost. I searched around and found a 3rd party software that claims it can do the job. It's called CrossCad. Anyone had any experience with CrossCad?

 

[pejaer]

There is also a package called Transmagic (

http://www.transmagic.com)....I

have not tried this, saw it in a magazine recently, and thought it would be handy if it works.

 

[SBaugh]

If you are looking for history tree information on importing files in from other CAD software.... good luck!! I have not seen anything work yet. From my experience all forms of importation from another CAD system results in a dumb solid and never has a history tree intact

Scott Baugh, CSWP
Berry Plastics
Cad Admin\Design Engineer
GEASWUG Greater Evansville Area SWUG Leader

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[pejaer]

ALso...

I forgot to mention that the more advanced packages of SW has "feature works" which I think builds the feature tree....turning the dumb model into a usable tree....at lest that is my understanding. Again, untested by me since I have the basic version. For the times I had to transfer, I ended up re-modeling. One command that is VERY handy is the "convert entity" sketch command. You can select the face of the dumb part, and "convert" traces the profile into the sketch, and you can extrude the same part. I think I ended up turning relations off and suppressing the original dumb part after the convert.

Paul

 

[SBaugh]

Featureworks does do that, if you have the time to put into it... its not as easy as one might think. It can auto find the easy stuff, but any complexity at all or anything it does not recognize will take some time out of your day to figure it out, if you can get it to work at all... Its not one of my favorite add-ins for SW.

What we do is bring in the dumb solid into a part and like pejaer says is we use Convert entities or anything to match the profile... However what we do is we delete the sketch relationships to the inserted part, an add Dimensions to fully constrain the sketch and Extrude to the length measured for that extrusion... and we repeat for each feature to reverse Engineer the part. Then with all relationships removed from the inserted part, it can then be deleted. This reduces Part size and keeps any references or file references from being broken in the future.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
Berry Plastics
Cad Admin\Design Engineer
GEASWUG Greater Evansville Area SWUG Leader

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376