CAD Forum

I'm looking for some of your experiences with translations (import or export) and maybe some of your favorite tricks or best practices (warning, these may get published somewhere else, so don't give away any secrets). Stuff I'm looking for would be favorite uses of import diagnostic/repair tools, information you can glean by text editing the import file, ways translations have failed, ways you've fixed bad files, stuff you just had to live with, limitations when dealing with translated data, etc.

TIA!

My favorite voodoo is the STEP 203 flip-flop.

Sometimes, due to export settings, STEP export converts cylinders, cones, and planes into B-surfaces. Re-exporting as STEP 203 and re-importing often re-converts these surfaces to their original topology. Why? I don't know.

This has worked in SW, Creo, and NX.

I am assuming you are referring to CAD import and export using neutral file

Import
import diagnostic
Import diagnostic and automatic repair work pretty well if the error is "small" enough, eg: some broken surface or small gap. However, if it involve ZTG (for example sheet metal export from CREO which allow ZTG...) import diagnostic most probably wont work and I would always end up manually repairing the file

Tip/Trick:
As we have 2 different CAD system, sometimes if I could not get a file to import properly in 1 CAD system (eg: SOLIDWORKS), I will import the file to other CAD system (CREO) and reexport it.
For example, recently i came across a really messed up CAD done by a freelancer (the step is all "broken surfaces) that i could not import to SOLIDWORKS, I ended up open it in CREO and reexport it as parasolid to be imported in SOLIDWORKS

Export
Most of the time i just stick with STEP214
Parasolid work well if it is SOLIDWORKS→SOLIDWORKS, but sometimes it got messed up pretty easily in other CAD.

Once thing with export that i still could not find a satisfactory solution for SOLIDWORKS is on how to indicate tapped hole in exported file
As the STEP export do not include cosmetic thread, it is hard to know which hole is suppose to be tapped hole, especially when the part has large number of hole of different size, and mix of tap and clearance hole.
Drawing helps, but some times 4X M3 hole callout in the drawing did not really tell where the other 3 hole is suppose to be.. Sometimes, I will end up "coloring" the hole feature to indicate which hole need to be tapped. For creo, the tapped hole will be exported with additional surface body so i have less issue with tapped hole

Round tripping is so quick that it is the first thing to do when encountering import errors. Export in a neutral format and reimport fixes an impressive amount of problems. I have had it work even when exporting to the same format that had the problems initially.

That's easy. Use Parasolid export..then you don't have to "translate" if you are going to another system that uses Parasolid. It is a reading of file. Not a translation or mapping of one entity to another and hopeing it reloves.
You might be surprised at how many systems are actually running Parasolid.

Ok, thanks for that. I used to use the other place to research articles I wrote, but now it's nicer to not have to do that.

Anyway, if it gets published I'll let you know.