Translation between I-deas and solidworks.

[bikerbarny]

If anyone could give me some help with this I would really appreciate it.

I need to be able to transfer parts between i-deas and solidworks, preferably both ways, and retain the history and features.

My understanding is that this is possible with STEP files. However, simply exporting a standard step file does not work- while i do get the right solid body imported with no faults when transfering either way, the receptive program does not recognise any features so i cant edit it.

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

Thanks very much for your time.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Have you tried opening the native UG file?

The Unigraphics translator imports the Parasolid information of a Unigraphics® II part or assembly into a SolidWorks part or assembly document. Only the Parasolid information is extracted, not the proprietary feature information of a Unigraphics II part.

You can import Unigraphics II compressed part files.

To open a Unigraphics part or assembly:

Click Open (Standard toolbar) or File, Open.

In the dialog box, set Files of type to UGII (*.prt), then click Options.

In the Import Options dialog box, under General, select or clear:

Import multiple bodies as parts. Imports a multibody part as separate part documents in an assembly document.

Under UG, Import tool bodies. Tool bodies are used to construct the final bodies.

Click OK.

Browse to a file, and click Open.

Version Information
You can import parts and assemblies from Unigraphics II version 10 and higher, including import of Unigraphics NX 2 files.

 

[bikerbarny]

Cheers, I've tried that and i cant get it to work well.
It doesn't import the history, and it only imports faces rather than a solid, in the same way iges would.
It also seems to do something strange to the faces, whereby you can only see them from the "wrong" side. I have no idea whats causing it, but its certainly not helping matters.

 

[AnnaWood]

No.... You will not get the history tree. This is true for all the 3D parametric cad packages.

You either have to live without the features....

Or get an independent that has the same cad package as what you are trying to work in for the customer.....

Or buy the software your customer uses.

Just the nature of the beast.

Cheers,

Anna Wood
SW 2007 SP4.0, WinXP
Dell Precision 380, Pentium D940, 4 Gigs RAM, FX3450

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/solidmuse

http://www.phxswug.com

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The only files that SW07 can import with features are Pro/E 2001, and WF1 and 2. I don't know how comparable the feature trees are though. SW07 can export to Pro/E V20.

SW08 can import Pro/E 2001 and WF1,2 & 3 with features and assy constraints (mates).

 

[SBaugh]

Anna is right! You cannot get a Feature tree when you import from a different CAD system on an importation type of file. There is a Pro-E translator built into SW and that is the only reason why you can get a tree for the most part. Any Parasolid, STEP, IGES or ACIS files that are imported are strickly dumb solids. If you have Featureworks and time to kill you can get a Feature tree back, but its going to take a lot of time for you to manually rebuild the file. THere is an automatic in the Featureworks add-in, but it only recognizes basic features.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

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

faq731-376

 

[josephv]

Hello bikerbarny,

You may want to contact your reseller on this one. As everyone said you will not get feature or history information. However, there may be some translation software that can do this for you. Of course, this is something that you would have to pay for. Here is one such service, but there are others:

http://www.translationtech.com/services.asp

In the past we had good results by getting an XPK file from I-DEAS then going to NX and then sending a STEP to SolidWorks. No history, but the geometry came in quite well.

Cheers,

 

[bikerbarny]

Thanks very much for your help everyone, looks like its not possible to keep the history. For some reason i had the impression it could be done fairly easily, but clearly not.
Cheers anyway.