Solidworks to alias

[chris-b]

Hi there all, anyone had any experience with IGES transfer from Solidworks to Alias? I get a whole lot of unsupported entities when I try to open a solidworks IGES, and the parts have no reference to each other (i.e one piece of in space somewhere), if they even import at all. The real funny thing is - the same file work fine with other solid modeling programmes. Any ideas?

chris

[andyboy]

Try seeing if there are toggles for which coordinate system you use and toggle for surfaces and curves only.

[finton]

I've found that a lot of artifacts with imported solidworks stuff tend to be duplicates, for instance if a patch on the surface is trimmed from a revolve, you'll get the trimmed surfaces, both the one you want, and the one that is supposed to be discarded, as well as the origonal untrimmed revolve (resulting in loads of massive hoops all over the place). Unfortunatly you have to go in and delete all this stuff, but knowing what it is does help a bit. You could try getting the solidworks model re-expoted with all construction history dumped, but I don't know if that is possible.

[wozzwinkl]

Here are the settings I use in the IGES options:

IGES solid/surface entities checked, as trimmed surfaces, IGES wireframe (3D curves) un-checked, surface representation as NURBS (standard doesnt work), export 3D curves and sketch entities un-checked (unless you need them), use high trim curve accuracy checked, and for assembly settings, I check save all components of an assembly in one file, but un-check flatten hierarchy. This should get you app your parts grouped into nodes, in the correct world-space, but will also get you copies of the surfaces. Select the nodes and either invert the selection or hide them and pick the free surfaces and delete them. It is sort of annoying, but it sure does work.

Good luck.