[frosty_ramen]

Does anyone have a good solution for exporting from solidworks to 3ds max?

[CRAS]

I made that once using accutrans 3d:
- save object (as kopy) to *.stl
- in the save dialogue choose options (bottom right)
- set the resolution of the faces (volume model will be polygonal..)

I don´t remember all the settings. You just need to try a bit.

Cheers

[Eric Lagman]

Buy Moi or try the demo. http://moi3d.com/

Save as IGES or Step from SW and export out .obj with ngons. Works pretty good most of the time.

[yolk]

yeah..the ngon tesselation of moi3d is awesome..just bought it

darn picasa webhosting..is there a way to upload images that stay publicly viewable?

[Eric Lagman]

yeah..the ngon tesselation of moi3d is awesome..just bought it

darn picasa webhosting..is there a way to upload images that stay publicly viewable?

I agree. Thats the main reason I bought it. I have never modelled anything with it. I use it as a bridge between cad to other non cad apps. I wish the axis of SW models came in the same though. I always have to rotate them

[JDHill]

Eric, there are a couple of ways to deal with this. First, if you are just going from SW to Studio via Moi, then open Moi's Options dialog, go to Import/Export > OBJ Options and set:

• Scale Factor: 0.001
• Orientation: Z-Up

That should make the SW > IGES > Moi > OBJ > Studio export path work without manual rotation or scaling. If that's too hack-ish, and you need to work with apps other than Studio, then the way to go would be, in SW:

1. make sure you have some axis-aligned geometry; a simple cube is easiest
2. main menu > Insert > Reference Geometry > Coordinate System...
3. click in the X axis box, then select the cube face whose normal points in SW's x-axis direction
4. click in the Y axis box, then select the cube face whose normal points away from SW's z-axis direction
5. click in the Z axis box, then select the cube face whose normal points in SW's y-axis direction

You can also select vertexes and such, but it's easier to use faces. With this coordinate system now created, when you export IGES or similar and click the [Options...] button in the file dialog and look near the bottom of the File Format dialog that comes up; you should be able to select the coordinate system you created from the pull-down box. The coordinate system described above is x/y/z compatible with Maxwell.