×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

(OP)
I am looking for information pertaining to the compatability of Inventor with SolidWorks.

1. Can you open native SW files in Inventor?

2. If not what format works best?

3. Can you access features when importing files? (similiar to featureworks in SW.)


Thanks ahead of time for everyones help


Dale

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

You can open some older versions of solidworks, but nothing from the latest version.

I personally prefer to use .sat format, but others use .iges and .stp

If you import as .sat (or other format) you won't have any of the features from the original (it's just a dumb solid). You can cut into the solid or add to it, but their won't be any features from the original.

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

I've tried the .sat technique to import a solidworks model of a valve body into Inventor.  The model would crash Inventor within one or two modifications.  Anybody know a way to get inventor to stabilize on large .sat files?

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

Once you open it, make sure you save it to your project location (which you are probably doing already).

Most of my experience has been very good with .sat files BUT they are usually not very large (about 5MB max I would say). I normally use an extrude-cut or revolve-cut to modify instead of trying to move faces etc. but that is just my workflow.

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

Thanks, Mike.  Did both of those, but I fear the original model just has too much complexity (lots of small fillets) and size (8+ Mb) for Inventor to handle.  Sigh.

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

I would try to open the file in Mech Desktop. Save as a desktop file, and then try to open in Inventor. The translator in MDT seems to be much more stable with problematic files.

RE: Opening Solidworks files in Inventor

Mike,

I just tried the MDT trick with a colleague's computer having the "latest" version of Mech. Desktop loaded on it.  MD read in the .sat file okay.  However, when opening the resulting MD .dwg file, Inventor gave the error message "no inventor parts found", and closed the MD translator, dumping me back to the "file open screen".  Sheesh...

Oh well, I already "rebuilt" my 2D cad drawings, manually changing all the features I needed to change, in AutoCad.  Took me 4 hours, but at least the job is done, and I can move on.



Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources