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.

[pauland]

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!)

Thanks for the explanation.

It's a pity you didn't find a design house using onShape! (yes, it's easy to say in hindsight).

Edit: I just read that onShape can import solidworks. I've also read that the 3D software I'm getting used to has a pipeline available to transfer between solidworks and MOI3D. Unlike onShape MOI3D is a one-off purchase (US$ 280).

Fusion360 is also an option (imports solidworks). There's a free license for startups..

https://www.autodesk.co.uk/campaigns...n-360/startups

[shiphen]

Thanks for the explanation.

It's a pity you didn't find a design house using onShape! (yes, it's easy to say in hindsight).

If you have skill in onShape perhaps you can recreate the finished design yourself or have someone re-create it in onShape?

I'll admit that I have limited knowledge in this area, but I can't imagine that your product requires such expensive software and that a cheaper product would do equally as well. In the 3D printer world users are creating things using far cheaper software.

As I mentioned earlier I know of one company that makes furniture designs using Lightwave3D ( a polygonal modeller and a separate renderer ) to create new furniture designs. Once they get firm orders they transfer those models to CAD systems to be refined and put into manufacture - so they are transferring designs between two different types of model - Polygonal to Nurbs.

I would hesitate to be locked into a $4,000 a year ecosystem unless you have a great revenue source to pay for it (then it doesn't matter so much).

The history of OnShape.com is that it was founded by some ex-employees of SolidWorks. They raised $169 million. OnShape uses SAAS technology. Basically there is is nothing to install and everything happens through your browser. It sounds terrible but works superbly. They obviously have some very impressive servers doing all the processing and rendering. I believe it also allows teams to work on the same design - but that is of no use to me.

I started using OnShape because they gave you up to 100MB of private space for free, indefinitely. They also had superb support and excellent training videos. I used it for 3D Printing. I tried about 6 or 7 different alternative 3D CAD packages (including SketchUp) and I hate them all. But I loved OnShape.

Unfortunately they have now gone the same way as SolidWorks - horribly expensive. It now costs between $1500 and $2000/year to get any private space.

So very ironically, although SolidWorks is even more expensive than OnShape, because SolidWorks is free (for startups) for the first year, I can't financially afford to use OnShape!

Part of the problem of course is if I need my model-makers to adjust the disign slightly the will need 3D CAD files that they can actually edit.

J


P.S. What's the difference between "Xara Designer Pro+" and "Xara Designer Pro 17" ? I am now doing a trial of the former...
I am probably incorrect but even in Window's "High DPI Scaling Overide" mode, it feels like XDP+ is not anti-aliasing as well as my XDP v10 (which I had to uninstall).

[Acorn]

P.S. What's the difference between "Xara Designer Pro+" and "Xara Designer Pro 17" ? I am now doing a trial of the former...
I am probably incorrect but even in Window's "High DPI Scaling Overide" mode, it feels like XDP+ is not anti-aliasing as well as my XDP v10 (which I had to uninstall).

Pro+ is a Xara-controlled product and linked to Xara Cloud. It is a subscription service for both together. I don't have 4k but I have need not difference in rendering.

Why ever did you uninstall XDPX10? It has a difference licence. Put it back now!

Acorn

[shiphen]

Pro+ is a Xara-controlled product and linked to Xara Cloud. It is a subscription service for both together. I don't have 4k but I have need not difference in rendering.

Why ever did you uninstall XDPX10? It has a difference licence. Put it back now!

Acorn

From what I can see Pro+ is the same things as Version 17 of XDP, no? And I am hoping that it has a better engine for importing from other formats (e.g. .AI and .PDF)

[Acorn]

From what I can see Pro+ is the same things as Version 17 of XDP, no? And I am hoping that it has a better engine for importing from other formats (e.g. .AI and .PDF)

No, its version is different to and ahead of XDPXv17.0. It is aligned with Xara Cloud updates, which are 3-8 more often that the 3-4/yr MagiXara manages.

It is trying to target a different maket.
Where I can leverage it is from website delivery I can quickly create a corporate presence that can deliver other media and publications.

If the Import for .AI & .PDF are not to your liking, why are you not hitting Xara with change requests?

Acorn

[Rallyman]

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!

Solidworks, may be bloated for YOU, but this software serves hundred thousands of engineers in various very different fields. Thus, it needs features for milling, turning, welding, sheet metal fabrication, rendering, and so on. It is a bit pricier than most of its competitors, but there are also way more expensive CADs. As far as I know, CATIA costs 30'000 bucks and more.

But back to your problem. I don't think any CAD can convert a drawing view to Nurbs or Bezier curves. I guess you have to live with all those tiny line segments. I think, if you scale up the drawing, you should also get a more precise curves (with even more line segments)
Line withs can be changed in the Solidworks Layers. I'm not shure though, if that has any influence to your output file.

[handrawn]

agree, I don't think that you can expect to get a 3D drawing app view into a 2D app such as xara - unless the 3D drawing app actually allows an export of the view in a way suitable for 2D

[Acorn]

No great contribution to the discussion but I just downloaded the free version of nanoCAD that claims to handle proprietary standard CAD file extension .DWG.
If your product designers created your master file, why can they not supply the appropriate anti-aliased snapshots or vectors you require?

Acorn

[shiphen]

For completeness, what has worked well enough for now was to export into PDF format.

Thank you for all your thoughts.

J