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Can Pro-E open native Solidworks files?

jerryt

New member
My company uses Pro-E WF4. We are looking to outsource to a design firm that uses Solidworks.If they provide us with Native Solidworks files (models & assemblies), can Pro-E open them directly with all the features and BOM's? Not looking for STEP or IGES.


Thanks
 
Brick by Brick, my brothers, brick by brick.

Do you need to be a paying customer to get all the licenses for this solidworks interface?
 
Thanks for the responses.


FYI - we sent this Industrial Design firm our current Pro/E assembly with 700 components and they were able to open it in Solidworks.
 
jerryt said:
Thanks for the responses.


FYI - we sent this Industrial Design firm our current Pro/E assembly with 700 components and they were able to open it in Solidworks.
How closely did it resemble the original? Can you afford to hand check every model to be sure every feature came in correctly? Can you afford not to?
 
Doesn't it come in as imported geometry, featureworks can't make that good of an imported model ... could it
 
You can directly import Solidworks native part and assembly files with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0.
Pro/ENGINEER FoundationXE Base License is required as well as Solidworks Explorer 2008 which is available for download on the Solidworks website.
Also refer the Following Link for more info

[url]https://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=145366[/url]

Alright this thread is quite old, but nonetheless there's very little info on this topic available. Is there a known incompatibility between 64-bit Pro/Engineer and the 32-bit DLLs for the SW API? Seems like there's going to be...?

Thanks
 
Last edited:
This thread is old, yet here's a quick update according to my experience:

Wildfire 5 can open native SolidWorks 2010 files. I set up the Windchill Workgroup Manager for SolidWorks and we ran all test cases we could think of. There are a few drawbacks, though:

1. They are imported as dumb solids, so if you want to be able to update SW geometry in WF5 then you are out of luck.
2. I had both SW and WF installed on my machine and I was able to use the models from SW into WF assemblies. It seems you need SW installed so you can integrate your files into WF assemblies
3. You can integrate assemblies as components in a larger WF assy, but just like .sldprt files, don't expect to be able to modify the geometry of their components.
4. There's no way SW 2010 can decently open a WF Family table
5. Exporting the assembly with the SW components will replace the SW parts and assemblies with WF files.
6. Export from Workspace is not available in the WWGM for SW so your only option to export the contents of your workspace is to pack and go from within SW.

...among other things.

I had the opportunity to participate in a beta testing of Creo 3 and you can expect little change on this part. The PTC guy mentioned that true Heterogeneous Design will come in a later datecode of Creo 3. The Beta we tested was not working with Windchill nor with the Work Group Manager for SolidWorks so I have no comments on this part. About the opening of SW files, they open, but still as dumb solids. I tried to open a decently sized native SW assembly (~ 1000 parts) in Creo 3 and it opened, exploded and overall worked fine the second time I tried (The first time it crashed, but it's a Beta so bugs are to be expected). I didn't see any major difference between the way they are open in WF5 and Creo 3, but my tests were not extensive. If all you need is to integrate common parts or libraries that won't change then you have a working solution here since WF5, but if you need to edit SW files directly in Creo then you, like me, will need to keep waiting.

I hope this information still is useful.
 
When Dassault buys Windchill, all your interoperability and translation problems will go away for good.
 
creo 3.0 and solidowrks

previously it was necessary that you have solidworks installed on the system where you wanted to open native solidworks file on proe.
now i think with Creo 3.0 you don't require solidworks, you can directly open the solidworks file in Creo 3.0 and edit the file with "flexible modeling extension.

yeah solidworks also opens pro/e files by converting them to solidworks files...it is ok with simple parts in complicated ones most of the features fail.
by the way the converted features have totally unconstrained sketches.
 
I have found it is best to convert it to a parasolids. Step usually works but have seen some odd issues on occasion. Parasolids .x_t seems to work the best for me.
 
With Creo 3.0 there's a significant difference when opening native SW files. Starting from Creo 3.0 M030 it's possible to open native SW files without converting them to Creo .prt files. You will be able to add native SW files to your assembly just as it was a Creo part file.
If you want to change the geometry e.g usung Flexible modeling Creo will prompt that now you must convert the part to a Creo file if you want to continue. At this point you will break the associtation with the original SW file.

Starting from Creo 3.0 F000, released in July, you will be able to open and convert native SW files without the need of any SW software installed.
 
If you want to change the geometry e.g usung Flexible modeling Creo will prompt that now you must convert the part to a Creo file if you want to continue. At this point you will break the associtation with the original SW file.

At this point will it just be dumb geometry like importing a STEP file?
 
At this point will it just be dumb geometry like importing a STEP file?

Yes, then it will be the normal import with dumb geometry. Of course, everything looks good in the demos but Flexible Modeling seems pretty impressive. It's very rare that you would drastic changes to a part from legacy data.
 

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