Feature Request Details

← Adobe Dimension: Feature Requests

Import Solidworks 3D File Formats

In my company, product designers usually render from Solidworks, and we have to wait for product samples to complete ad photography.

I was hoping Felix could cut out the middle man, but today I found out that Felix supports no file types Solidworks can export. It kind of defeats the purpose of the program for my role.

If we could support any of these file types (obviously excluding PS, PDF's, and JPEGS). We want this specifically to take prototype models to photography level.

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Donnine Canamar shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

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  • LarCart commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Our company has a similar workflow, and the "waiting for product samples" part sometimes took too long or never happened. So I have started using Dimension to create photo renders from Solidworks. I found a converter called "CAD Exchanger" that can convert Solidworks (SLDPRT or SLDASM) to Obj format, and there are many other formats it can convert from/to also. So the engineers send me the model, I convert it, pull it into Dimension, tag the surfaces with the proper materials, and generate the photo render.

    Personally, I don't see why Adobe doesn't just license the converter API from CAD Exchanger and then they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel trying to come up with their own import/export, and they could focus their time/energy on the "value added" parts of Dimension that improve rendering speed, quality, and ease of use.

  • Jack Sutcliffe commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I exported each body as an STL from Solidworks then imported each one separately into dimension. I didn't move then till after all of the bodies was imported. They kept their position in space in relation to each other and i was able to select them all and move them about. Having a group option would be great.

  • Matt Martin commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Echoing the other requests for Solidworks support. I have to use Solidworks Visualize (Windows only) and it the interface control is terrible.

  • Jesse commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Most product designers need to import SolidWorks or Rhino files into render engine. The fact that this program has no option for that means operating in an amateur environment. Would not consider using it till it supports the type of files it needs to.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    STL is not a great format for 3d rendering. It doesn't support explicit normals so the smoothing from your solidworks/cad models will be screwed up in the render, depending on the complexity of your surfaces. For basic primitives it doesn't matter that much, but for more complex surface models like vehicles etc you want to retain perfect smoothing. STL is mainly used for 3d printing and CNC where high tesselation is most important.

    STEP files is a much better format for cad models. It's a universal format for NURBS/cad models and almost all cad packages can export it. I would prefer STEP format because then you could export from Inventor, Catia, Fusion360, NX, Rhino and Solidworks and render it in Dimension/Project Felix.

    FBX format support would also be nice, since this is a common exchange format for games and models used in computer graphics/animation. Unfortunately most CAD packages (Solidworks, Catia, Inventor etc) don't have FBX export built in yet.

  • Matthis de Wit commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm doing it like this and it works pretty well:

    1. Save assembly to STL in seperate files
    2. Open Microsoft 3D builder (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/3d-builder/9wzdncrfj3t6)
    3. Create a new scene
    4. Drag and drop all your STL's into the new scene, it will stay assembled
    5. Save as OBJ-file
    6. Import in Adobe Dimension (Project Felix)
    7. Now you have an folder with the seperate parts fully aligned

    Hope this helps some one,

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Just a comment: Scandinavian letters: æøå doesn't seem to be supported in filenames - Felix does nothing when trying to import. Renamed to english letters and problem was solved.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Please do! The reason I installed Felix was to generate photorealistic renders of CAD models. The ability to import STL files would be amazing!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Please accept more file types! If this could work with fusion 360/ solid works/ rhino that would be amazing.

  • Kevin Wong commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    We design products in SolidWorks and it would be great if we could import SolidWork SLDASM and SLDPRT files. Or STEP Exchange files.

    Alternatively support PDF 3D like in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended which we use for preparing 3D content for distribution.

  • John Wetzel commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    +1 for easy support of a file format that will export cleanly from solidworks with layers.

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