We are having to deal with a package called SpaceVision, which used to be a proprietary product of Nissan Motor, but is now offered to the public. I have not found a way to get this info into SolidWorks. Does anyone have any experience with these files?
A .drg file appears to be the native file format, and a .wrl is a VRML format, but neither SW nor UG will open it. The only outputs I see are a bitmap (not much use, obviously) and a binary output. However, I can't get SW to open the binary file. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I know I left several holes, but that's the problem - I told you about all I know about it. There isn't even a help menu in the package. I also found basically nothing on a Google search except something related to OGL settings for video.
So, with that being said, let me try to give you more info. It is a CAD system that I think is probably on a scale with Catia in that Nissan uses it to design their vehicles, and used to be proprietary to them. But File/Save As only gives the option of the native .drg. File/Export has the option to save as Binary, which produces a file with a .bin extension. However, SW doesn't recognize the file at all. I even tried to rename it with a .x_t extension, just on a fluke that it might work - it didn't. Obviously I don't know what the format is of the "binary" file - only that SW, UG, and Catia all don't recognize it.
There is a Tree export which blows apart an assy into individual files (.bin format) but that doesn't help much.
So, those appear to be the only meaningful outputs (others are bitmap, color table, etc.) and I don't seem to be able to use them.
We have sent an email to Japan to ask about IGES output or some other module that maybe we don't have, but I am told we won't hear anything this week as they are all on vacation. I'm also not too hopeful about being able to get somewhere. A few years ago we got some engine files from Nissan, but I'm told that the US people gave them a trip through IDEAS to export a STEP file. So, I guess I'll have to wait & see what we learn from Japan, I just thought there might be a chance that someone else had already been through this.
Good luck,, I worked for a Japanese company for 10 years. CAD data translation (even between divisions) was always a major pain. Even plain communication was difficult.
The Japanese are obssesively secretive, and won't divulge information even when it's in there best interest. For instance, we had a set of tools (molds) to duplicate for an OEM product that was already running in Japan. Our japanese counterparts sent us CAD drawings of the tools. What we didn't know was that the drawings had never been updated after the original tools were made. There were alot of tweaks made to the original design to compensate for warp, and other things. Turns out, the marked up drawings were in the tooling engineer's "secret" file, and it was unthinkable that he should have to share them. This was totally acceptable from their cultural viewpoint. Well, we had no choice but to repeat all of the trial and error tweaking to finally get good parts. The tools ended up costing the company over twice as much. I guess this was OK to them. Go figure,,,
VRML seems to be a path you can use. Several CAD and animation packages will import VRML. Do you have any other CAD programs that might open the VRML and then export something else you can get into Solidworks? I can see one potential problem...I think VRML is a mesh format, and solidworks doesn't accept that at all. (I am currently trying to get mesh models from AutoCAD into SW.)
Polytrans (by OKINO) is a program just for file translation and has a lot of options for converting. However, I have only used an older version.
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