3DSMax to SolidWorks

One more thing, FeatureWorks->Feature Recognition seems like it'd be a really useful feature. Why is it grayed out no matter what I select? How can I make this work?

FeatureWorks is an add-in that is part of the professional or premium edition of SolidWorks. See here:

You may try bringing the file into Acrobat 8.0 3D and exporting it as an .x_t from there. I haven't tried it with 3DS files but have tried it with .WRL and STEP files with good results.

Josh

If you have SolidWorks Office Premium 2007, and have ScanTo3D add-in enabled, you can load .3ds files from the SW open file dialog directly.

Regards

Mark

Thank you for the suggestion. I am downloading Acrobat as we speak. However, to clarify, I DO have SolidWorks 2007 Professional and have the FeatureWorks addin, but the feature recognition command only is grayed out.

Unrelated Question: In trying to fill in this wireframe, I find that I can select a polygon and click "Filled Surface". The problem is that I don't want to have to do this 1500 times. Any way to get around this by just selecting them all and doing something? It gives me an error message when I try this now: "The patch cannot be created. Try a different curvature method, alternate face, or surface quality setting." I've mucked with a few of the settings. If I could simply fill in all the polygons to make a surface my problem would essentially be solved, since SolidWorks lets me do a section view on the wireframe mesh igs import.

Hey Mark,

This advice was awesome, but only worked once. I successfully imported my model but would like to do so again to fiddle with some options. Now, however, I can't load the .3ds. The problem is that whenever I activate the Scan-To-3d add-in, it automatically unselects itself. Like I will go Tools->Add ins->Check off Scanto3d->Ok, but then I can go right back into Tools->Add ins and scanto3d will be unchecked. It worked once but I can't get it to stay activated again. Thoughts?

Hello Mark,

The only problem that I kind of have with going this route is that going to the scan to 3D is built a little more for scanned data. Sometimes the data direct from 3Ds/Max is not a scanned data set. It would be nice to just open it like a Rhino file. In other words a little more direct opening of the file as if it were a neutral format. Actually this would be nice for .obj as well.

Thanks

This sounds like a registry problem with your SolidWorks installation and I have experienced myself. The problem is that the permissions in your registry keys for SolidWorks are not set to Full Read Write access since all your settings in SolidWorks should be saved when you end your session. That sounds like its not happening for you since your add-ins should be set the way you left them when you exited SW. If you know how to use START>Run>regedit, you can correct this problem by giving full permission to yourself for the SolidWorks keys. If you don't feel confident in doing this, find someone that knows how to use Regedit and this might be the problem.

Regards

Mark

There is a huge disconnect between the MCAD world and the FX/ postproduction worlds in that NURBS and Polygonal/Mesh modeling are incompatible. This is a passion of mind to try to overcome and I'm working on several fronts to see what we can come up with. BTW, the AutoSurfacing in 2008 is greatly improved in getting .3ds and .obj files to Solid models.

Regards

Mark

Thanks again but I think you misunderstand the problem. Even if I don't close SolidWorks, just the add-in's pop up window by clicking okay and selecting Scan-to-3d, nothing will happen and the next time I go back to Tools->Add ins->, even if 3 seconds later, Scan to 3d will be magically deselected.

As an experiment, I turned on every single add in. I then clicked okay, and SolidWorks took a moment to load every add in EXCEPT Scan- to-3d, the one I need to use. When I go back to tools->add ins, there are checkboxes next to all add ins except scan to 3d, which somehow got unchecked in the whole process.

Okay, I understand. My official advice is to have your VAR deal with this since this is not normal and something is clearly wrong with your install. Unofficially, can you load the scanto3d .dll from SW? To do this launch SW and then File>Open and select the file type .dll from the file types list box then navigate to C:\Program Files\SolidWorks \ScanTo3D\Addin and load the swngre.dll. Then you should see the ScanTo3D add-in on by defualt. Now quit SolidWorks and then re-launch. Is it still not selected in the Add-ins list?

Regards

Mark

This worked, thank you very much!