You can also see a “Solid Bodies” folder under the part file. Again, this is an indicator that the file is referencing something externally. You can see an external reference symbol (->) after the filename. If you look at arrow 1 (above), you can see that the name of the file is suffixed with the file extension (In our case “.STEP”) – this is because 3D Interconnect is reading the file directly and not converting into SOLIDWORKS part file. Let’s compare that feature tree with the same assembly but using 3D Interconnect: If you save the imported assembly now, you will create 3 part files and one assembly file on your system. If you want to recognise features, or add features to the imported body, you can right click and use FeatureWorks to intelligently extract them, or just create each feature within the part file. This is the functionality you’re probably used to.
STEP file in SOLIDWORKS 2018 with 3D Interconnect turned off. You can see that we’ve imported an assembly, but if you look under each part you can see an Imported body feature. In the image below, we have the feature tree for an imported. Let’s look at the differences between FeatureWorks and 3D Interconnect, so you can make an informed choice as to whether you want use 3D Interconnect or not. However, instead of 3D Interconnect being turned OFF by default, it is now turned ON. ACIS files so they too can be opened in their native format. In SOLIDWORKS 2018 the functionality has been extended to. …which is a little difficult to find, so you may not have stumbled across it. Whilst still in Beta in 2017, you could use it by turning it on through the system options… Take a look at the video below to see how it works. So, if you used the file inside an assembly – and then altered the file – it could be automatically updated to the new version, without the need to re-import. This allowed us to open PTC Creo, Solid Edge, NX or Autodesk Inventor files natively, with no conversion required (you can open CATIA files too, but only with SOLIDWORKS Premium). With the release of SOLIDWORKS 2017, we saw the introduction of a technology called 3D Interconnect. Before you do that, its worth covering a little bit of SOLIDWORKS history. STEP and Parasolid files the way you used to, you might want to disable 3D Interconnect.
#Converting from solidworks 2019 to 2018 how to
At a Glance How to Export SolidWorks models to AutoCAD?