Pro-E to Solidworks

[Speedy]

I work for a small company which is part of a much larger corporation.

We have recently been told what we will be switching over to Solidworks from our current Pro-E.

This seems crazy to me as we literally have thousands of components going back years that are all in Pro-E.

What is the best approach to this. I know that we can convert all our models/drawings to Solidworks via STEP (see thread554-149293 ), but this involves a considerable amount of work.

The only viable approach is to run the 2 packages concurrently in parallel with new projects in Solidworks.

I would appreciate any comments on this?
Has anyone experience of something similar?

As they say -
"Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die"

 

[cadcamguy]

You might want to check out ProBatch, not the user most friendly program.

You don't say what rev. your on but has been around forever.

Should be in your bin directory, it takes some practice

 

[cadcamguy]

Here's a example for converting pdfs, you're going to the STEP Option Preference, the concept is the same

http://www.profilesmagazine.com/p25/tools.html

 

[dgallup]

It depends on if you you need interoperability between the old models and the new models. If you do then you will have to convert. Be aware that using STEP of IGES will result in just a dumb lump of geometry. No features, no parametrics, no dimensions, no parameters, etc.

If the old parts don't need to work with the new parts then you can keep two systems. We currently have legacy AutoMAD files, one product line in Pro/E and another product line that was brought in from a different location in SW. There is no benefit to us to convert the files as they don't have to play nice together.

 

[dutch7777]

I just started this SW job a month ago and they have
Featureworks here for converting dumb solids into feature
driven parts...pretty sweet really...taker time, but probibly
quicker than doing parts over if needed. Works well with
sheetmetal stuff also...

 

[dutch7777]

Also I believe SW 09 will be able to open Pro stuff
directly again...might wanna check on that tho...

 

[BOPdesigner]

I have yet to see a CAD program that can open CAD data from a compeditors format without losing all the part intelligence. Even if you open a Pro/E file in Solidworks it goes through some kind of neutral file format translation in the background first. That being said there are companies that specialize in migrating CAD data from one format to another while maintaining most of the intelligence. Example:

http://www.proficiency.com

or

http://www.theorem.co.uk/

I believe Proficiency recently added or is working on supporting the Solidworks format as part of their migration services.

 

[mjcole]

SolidWorks can open any Pro/E models. I know this because I have a bunch from now and my former Pro/E models from work and school. They also have a Feature Recognition tool that is quite powerful and which only now is PTC working on creating. I have been waiting a long time for them to realize how this may be beneficial.

When opening model you can run Feature Works and automatically or manually convert a dumb solid into features. This process generally works in reverse order. By that I mean you recognize fillets chamfers and cut features which get removed from the model and stored until you work your way back to the original feature. Then SolidWorks will re-map the feature order putting the fillets or rounds last.

I also recently went to SolidWorks World and talked with a few Feature translation companies that offer products for converting and repairing models bi-directionally between Pro/E and SolidWorks.

I plan on using several of my models to test this process because it is a subject that I have much interest in.

Michael