What is the best way to export a wireframe 3D view in SolidWorks into Xara?

[shiphen]

Here's the background.

I am developing a novel physical consumer product (in the paper-handdling/office stationery sector). In the world of CAD / industrial product design SolidWorks appears to be the de facto standard - everyone you talk to seem to use it. We have commissioned a product design consultancy to do a chunk of design work on our product and unsurprisingly it has been completed using SolidWorks. (nightmare!)

Unfortunately SolidWorks goes to great lenghts to stop other companies from being able to upload and edit their data files.

Why is it SolidWorks so expensive?

"Why is it so rubbish" is my first question! It is a monumental bloatware like nothing I have ever seen. The intallation files are 15GB. Yes GB! And the learning curve is horrendous. I have used some fairly similar CAD software (OnShape) but nothing is remotely obvious in SolidWorks. On the upside, "everything is possible" is also more or less true. (And at those prices you would certainly hope so!)

The SolidWbusiness model is that they suck you in as a student or (if you are lucky) as an startup. But once that expires you are on the hook for what, $4000+ per year?

Thereafter you sign up for thousands and thousands of £££ but you get basically unlimited amounts of support. But you absolutely need it because everything is SO counter-intuitive. And time is money! And also because all your suppliers use it. And having learnt you way around the software, that becomes a huge personal investment that you have made.... so then you don't want to invest your time & energy learning anything else!


IMHO, it's an absolutely appalling situation. But my source files are in SolidWorks, so what can I do? It is the industry standard and for now at least I'm stuck with it. And for this year at least I have free software.

Ideologically I would MUCH prefer to use something else. SolidWorks is dated... bloated... clunky... insanely non-intuitive. The whole thing needs to be re-written. And many people have tried (e.g. OnShape). But ironically I can't AFFORD to use anything else because they are all too expensive and for this year I get to use it for free AND with excellent technical support...

On the upside, at least I can still read the SolidWorks user interface on my 4K screen, without blurring the whole UI (unlike in Xara - don't get me started!)


@theinonen
Yes, that is very roughly what I am trying to do. (Although I am wanting to use just the lines of the 3D view that are visible on my screen - a bit like a screenshot... It's clunky but I seem to have found a way now)

My question is what is the BEST FORMAT to get a SolidWorks DRAWING into Xara?

One (slight) problem is that is that if you import it into XDP (v10) via PDF format, then all the shapes - everything - comes in as a single line, the curves come in as a series of short lines, rather than a true curve (B-spline). Fwiw, the line comes out rather fat too.

I also tried exporting it into Adobe Acrobat (.AI) format, but that had all the exact same problems. Except that the curves had fewer nodes making them horribly chunky.

Does the latest version of XDP (v16) handle it's imports any better than v10?

From what I can see, it looks like .PDF is probably the best we can hope for, yes?

J


PS This thread has inspired me. I just contacted OnShape to see if they can't do a "Entrepreneurial License" deal to compare with SolidWorks. A long-shot but with a shot, me thinks.