I have the same issue. Trying to describe to PCB designers what is/not needed is difficult.
I came to the conclusion it's easier to accept the files and delete what is not needed.
Having a PCB add-in for SW may help, but we have had issues with that also.
Working with PCBs is too cumbersome.

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks
ctophers home

I work for a company that does a lot of Circuit board design I have to house those boards. Sometimes those components are important when it comes to clearances, at least for me anyway. Our EE's use Altium and there is an option to save the PCB out as a single Step file. It comes into SW as a part file with bodies. Granted its a lot of bodies, but it is so much easier than loading thousands of part files that do not help me in my job every day. I need the PCB and from there I select the components that are are important and suppress the rest, and use Configurations to control it as needed. Other than that, there is not much more you can do but request a different file or see what options are available. maybe whatever program they are using they will share the export options menu with you.

Hope this helps,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
Mechanical Engineer
Ciholas
https://www.ciholas.com/

Quote:

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

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SBaugh,

I have dealt with STEP files from Altium. What I have here is a Parasolid which includes every single track inside the PCB itself. I took my work laptop home over the weekend, and I managed to import everything. The trick is to have something else fun to do over the many hours SolidWorks is locked up.

The model seems to have sorted itself with all the PCB tracks first. I may be able to delete 80% of the model. We will see in a bit.

--
JHG

If you ignore the tracks properly you can short circuit one or more to ground with a mounting screw.

I do feel your pain. Once got a model for an alternator from a supplier that included all the windings as complex extruded shapes. Removing the rotor and the windings eliminated 99.9% of the model size.