[skippy]

Hi All, just checking if anyone has had experience with importing Rhino sketches into Solidworks. I have a Romer 6 axis digitising arm that I run directly in Rhino and even though I do my surface modelling in Rhino, I prefer to do my engineering stuff (solid modelling) in SolidWorks. My normal work flow is as follows: I do my finished base sketches in Rhino then do a save as to another file and make this a very simple file with one layer only as a sketch (not a surface nor a solid) and I generally stay with lines, circles and arcs and stay away from splines where possible so there is less translation to be done. I believe that the earlier in the process the import/export is done the better. I do the import into SW using IGES format.

So that is my process and it works but has several draw backs although not major ones. The imported stuff ends up as a long list of "imported curves" so then I have to do a sketch and use convert entities on every single "imported curve" to re-do them. Also all the circles end up as 2 half circles so I have to redraw them all. I can live with these but is there a better way? Is there someone who does this kind of thing regularly and has a more efficient way? Another format instead of IGES maybe? Supposedly SW will accept 3dm files (Rhino) but when I tried to import the sketch it said something about a lack of surface/solid data. Next I tried doing a straight extrude in Rhino to make it into a solid just for the sake of the import into SW but I got the same message.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've posted this in the SolidWorks section as well as I can't see a way to post in both with one post so (moderators) please modify if required. Thanks

[RandK]

I use (or make) a surface in Rhino to transport the geometry and then open the .3dm in SW, start a sketch and use convert entities to get the edge. This way anything I want to use in Rhino such as splines gets to SW just fine. If you need to play with the geometry you can delete all the relations from the converted entity and do as you please, even edit splines. Not sure why that didn't work for you when you extruded. If it's planar geometry, I just use a planar surface as the temporary surface.

[skippy]

I use (or make) a surface in Rhino to transport the geometry and then open the .3dm in SW, start a sketch and use convert entities to get the edge. This way anything I want to use in Rhino such as splines gets to SW just fine. If you need to play with the geometry you can delete all the relations from the converted entity and do as you please, even edit splines. Not sure why that didn't work for you when you extruded. If it's planar geometry, I just use a planar surface as the temporary surface.

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll give it a go tomorrow and let you know. It's probably just something I did wrong and just need to try it again. Thanks

[skippy]

Hi RandK,
I tried that using planar surface and it worked perfectly. I don't have a clue why it didn't before and that is what threw me. A big thanks to you.
Phil