Working between Pro/E and AutoCAD/Revit

[ayuda42]

Hi,

I am a Revit MEP user primarily and work at a building design firm. After a long time of getting unusable files from a machine vendor, we have requested from corporate a seat of Pro/E and the main file from the vendor so that we don't have to wait around for them to try and export failed attempts at something we can use.

It has been some time since I used Pro/E and am more familiar with solidworks.

They tried to give us a DWG, but it was 500mb in size and pretty much unusable by most of our users who only use AutoCAD.

I essentially need the exo-skeleton of the machine. I suggested that the company try exporting to an STL file, which from my understanding, is exactly what we need - no minute details, or assembly information included. The vendor had said that the STL file "did not work" and gave no more details.

When I receive the Pro/E license and the model from the vendor the first thing I will try to do is export to STL on my own, and see what I can come up with.

What I think is clogging up the DWG file was the amount of detail - subassemblies in the model, bolts, threads on bolts, etc - are all useless and unnecessary amounts of details to the architects and others. Is there a way to remove that information from an export? Would I have issues selecting each part of a model and deleting them (I'm sure I'd get some assembly errors).

I am open to any feedback and help.

Thank you.

 

[dr_gallup]

You should be able to put fasteners and other details on layers, hide the layers and then export. The hidden items will not export. How easy you can select the things you want to hide depends on how the model was made. If they already have a layer convention it will be very easy. If they have a naming convention it would also be easy. If it is a hopeless mess you might have to pick each item manually.

I have no idea what you need since you first say you got a DWG file which from Pro/E will be strictly 2D but then you say you want a STL file which will be 3D. I doubt an STL file would be very useful since it will be millions of triangles with no distinction between different parts, just a huge blob of geometry. Never even heard of Revit, I thought that was the sound a frog makes.

 

[ayuda42]

Thanks for the layer tip.

Wasn't aware that DWG file exports from Pro/E would solely be 2d DWGs, pretty useless for us, a lot of our stuff is all 3d DWG files. I used STL file format for 3d printing, I was just under the assumption that it made everything solid, misunderstanding of what the file does on my part.

Revit is a BIM program. It's pretty standard in building design industry now, surprised you've never heard of it.

Will update later when we've acquired the model.

 

[FishNut]

Try shrinkwrapping first, teh export to a .sat (asixcs ) file. This has worked for us, but its cumbersome inside of revit. Wev'e also exported the shrink-wrpped model to iges, import to acad, the export to something revit would take. decent results but nothing great. I was told by autodesk you pretty much need to get to Inventor.


reviit does not want to play well with others, looks like autodesk strategy toforce people to inventor, if they want their models in revit. and you *have* to have your model in revit in order for it to be spec'd in a design. Well thats the fear anyway.


would love to see a revit topic here in rant and rave, to hear people opinions on it.

 

[ayuda42]

Actually as it turns out we do have an inventor license, but they can't give us the base assembly file for proprietary reasons. We'll see what they give us.

FishNut,

I think it has to do with revit being a BIM program that works with solid models as apposed to a 3d solid. I don't think we'd actually end up importing anything solid, just end up importing a 3D dwg file. That's what we're hoping, anyway.

I only ended up using pro/E in my first semester class freshman year; after that all freshman were taught Solidworks. By senior elective there was a class on all of the packages for SW as well. I'm not sure what the capabilities were for pro/E, either.

I don't have too much experience with inventor, but I really do like the ease of going from autodesk product to autodesk product.