SolidWorks compatibility question

[Rick Pollack]

So....if you have SolidWorks 2012 and your supplier uses SW 2010...how are you supposed to exchange files since there is no backward compatibility?????? (2012 can convert 2010, but 2012 can't save to 2010).

[L C]

Rick,

You have to save it out to another file format such as .step and iges, with the loss of feature tree.  This is a significant issue.  It is really annoying as you are no doubt finding out.  Another thing is that once it converts to a newer version it cannot be put back to the previous version.

I wish I had a better answer.  Honestly it is a major pet peeve of mine about solidworks.

Lee

[Aaron Double]

You are correct.

The trick is to keep older versions of the software installed and you work with the highest version you can. It's annoying but it works.

Aaron

[Michael Lenczewski]

buy a copy of solid works 2010?  

There is an option to export stuff to STL in solid works 2010. 

http://help.solidworks.com/2010/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/LegacyHelp/Sldworks/ImpExp/STL_Files.htm 

Found in a google search: export solidworks 2010 to stl

[Joseph Ting]

Unfortunately, STL won't allow you to easily modify model features
since you lose the feature history. That's a problem for a parametric
package like SolidWorks.

It's fine if you need to do a straight exchange, though, and don't
need to make changes. For example, most of the online rapid
prototyping services like Quickparts or Protomold/First Cut ask for
STL files.

Guess it's not such a big issue if you use a direct modeling package
like Creo Elements.

On Mar 5, 7:02 pm, Michael Lenczewski <michael.lenczew...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> buy a copy of solid works 2010?
>

> There is an option to export stuff to STL in solid works 2010.http://help.solidworks.com/2010/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/LegacyHel...

[Dale Dunn]

My recommendation for this is STEP AP214b. This has been the least likely to produce translation errors for me (in 12 years using SolidWorks), and it also preserves component colors.

Hopefully in the future you can find suppliers able to provide files that you can use.  If you are tied to this supplier and they won't update their software, your only alternatives are to use the intermediate format, or pester your VAR to get you 2010 and abandon the work you've done in 2012.

Looking to the future, it has been announced that 2012 SP5.0 will open 2013 files (with some features in the tree locked). I suspect they will hold to that pattern going forward, of being able to open the new version's files in the last service pack of the previous version. So your suppliers will still need to be within one year of what you're using if you both want to be making edits.

[Michael Lenczewski]

Proprietary software is soooo much like a drug.  Guess I'm kinda new to 3D modeling, i think i'll stick to openSCAD and Blender....

OpenSCAD has modules...

Blender has a nice feature tree...  

Though they aren't a perfect fit for engineering parts, they do work ok.  Then again, never tried SW so it might just be that much awesome despite these compatibility issues.