Import Sketch From Autocad To Solidworks

[Angelique Syria]

Hellothank you for your reply. i tried to save the file as 2013 drawing and it worked with the import feature. However, i want to copy and paste a sketch from autocad to solidworks. it used to work on autocad 2015.

I can't be sure what version of AutoCAD Mechanical you have, but it sounds like you might be working with version 2018. If this is the case, the issue could be due to the compatibility between the two programs. This would explain having to save down to AutoCAD 2013 (which is the previous file format) to complete the import of the file into Solidworks 2015.

That being said, it may be possible to use the cut and paste method again by updating Solidworks to the current version. If you do try this, please come back and let me know if it worked. It would be great to share this information with the AutoCAD Mechanical Community.

I am unfamiliar with Autocad and the project that came to me is a ship in 3D dwg format. I currently use SOLIDWORKS and that is the problem. When i am trying to import it directly as 3D to SOLIDWORKS, it looks to load perfectly but the final model is semi complete.

The photo of the file of autocad is attached first. Secondly is what i see in solidworks after loading it in 3D curves. and last is the keyshot loading.

I can't upload the DWG cause it is 15 mb.

I have never used Solidworks, so I spent about 30 minutes on Youtube looking for a video that would explain the proper procedure for importing Autocad 3D models into Solidworks but every video was importing .dwg files as a 2D sketch. The only one that showed how to import as a 3D model was in Chinese, but I could still follow along, watching the video, and I noticed in the import window there was an option to import all layers or selected layers. I assume you are importing "All layers"?

Since Keyshot can import the .dwg with no issues, I can only guess that Solidworks is not understanding the model, but if that's the case, you should get an error message or something telling you that parts of the model have been ignored, or something.

Maybe try exporting the model out of Autocad as .sat format and then import that file into Solidworks. If that doesn't work, put your .dwg file on Dropbox and then post a link here so we can take a look at it.

The only assumption I can make is that there must be problems with the CAD model. You will probably need to rebuild portions of it to correct whatever issues are present. It could be self intersecting meshes or perhaps the model is not watertight or maybe something else is causing the problem. Who sent you the model? Since you are not familiar with Autocad, you may need to send it back and ask the creator to find and fix the problems.

Keyshot is just a rendering program. It will open and display whatever model you present to it, regardless of whether there are problems or not. Just like a camera. You can take photos of a broken object, but if you try to use that broken object, it's not going to work.

Solidworks is a very technical program and it needs you to feed it models that are put together correctly, and when I look at the error message you got when you tried to export to .sat format I can see there are 725 objects that were ignored because they are not solid bodies. So that's a big problem and it will take a lot of work to repair the model.

Yes, you could fix the model if you had experience doing 3D work in Autocad, but I don't do 3D work in Autocad, so it would be very difficult and challenging for me figure out how to fix all those problems. Also, you're using a very old version of Autocad and I don't remember what tools are available in that old version, so that's another issue.

To tell the truth, i had a thought to reconstruct the whole ship drom zero to SOLIDWORKS but it will take too long and i think it will be hurtful. So i will bring it back to the autocad designer to fix it. Ok thank you very much all of you. Keep it up !!

Late to the party, but is the DWG a surface model or a solid model? Sometimes the surface models will not import well into SolidWorks because there are problems analyzing the individual surfaces. When you tried to import it, did it give you any options to attempt to "heal" the surfaces?

Merging everything together into one object is your best bet for this to work because it will give you the prompt and it will give you the option to automatically convert everything to a 3D solid before implementing the union command (merge/union are basically the same thing).

I am having trouble importing a DWG block (from AutoCAD 2018) into sketchup pro 2018. I have read prior posts and seen that saving the AC drawing in an earlier format (2013), and exporting the block again, should help solve this. However, this has not worked.

So numb nuts over here (me) has worked it out. I have to open the exported block and save as earlier version. Thanks for the help anyway guys. It is a bit of a schlep, mind. Hopefully Trimble will make Sketchup more compatible with AC 2018 soon!

You may encounter a situation where you want to export a layout view as a model space drawing. You can do so by following these steps: At the bottom of the drawing area, click the Layout tab of the layout you want to export. Right-click the tab, and...

There are times where importing a picture into a CAD software can be a useful thing. One example is in providing unique features or images that can be traced over for a logo sketch. Laser cutting a logo into a part is a great way to simplify a design by eliminating the need to add extra parts or labels.

Another example is prototyping. In some cases, an irregular flat part may have been prototyped from a piece of cardboard, and the next step is to make the same part out of metal. Instead of needing to take numerous amounts of measurements to re-create the design in CAD, one could simply take a picture of the flat prototype piece, import the picture into a CAD program, and trace over the picture to recreate it in a CAD space.

Once the sketch is correctly scaled, extrude the sketch to create the part. To review how to extrude a sketch, review our article on Creating a 3D part in SolidWorks. Also review SendCutSend guidelines for minimum sizes of radii for different materials. Some materials may not allow for the laser to cut sharp corners into the material. Therefore, for some materials, this design may need to have rounded corners instead of the corners that come to a point.

Use the techniques in this article as additional tools in your SolidWorks toolbelt whenever you need to create a sketch of an existing image. Or, if you already have a flat, irregular design in your possession in a particular material, use this technique to bring it to life in another material.

I regularly get .dxf files from our mechanical engineers and import them into illustrator to save as eps files. Suddenly, with Illustrator 2018 they are importing so small they can barely been when I import at original size. For example, the drawing below is magnified at 3200%. Since the stroke is coming in at .75pt, it is just a bunch of thick black lines and blobs, but you can see the objects when you highlight the drawing, as shown below.

I was able to open it to normal size by scaling it to about 6400% , but I have been doing this for many years with multiple previous versions of Illustrator and never encountered this. In fact, I opened this specific drawing in Illustrator 2017 just a couple of days ago and it opened normally.

So is there some setting I am not aware of that got changed in the new version of Illustrator, or did Adobe just screw this up? Note that I have tried this with multiple files and all had the same problem.

DXF files are referred to as unitless. If I'm working on an architectural document set to feet and I export a 100' object as a DXF file, the Illustrator import/place dialog box just sees that the object is 100 "things" long. In order to size an object accurately upon import, there needs to be a clear relationship between the object-to-be-imported units and the document units. If Illustrator had the option to view documents i

@dfkurz. I too have this same issue, but just found the solution. Open the DXF or DWG and select the "Original Size" or "1:1", doesn't really matter the units as you've mentioned. Once the file is open, select all of the imported artwork. On the Properties Manager on the top that indicates the height (H) and width (W), just change the units shown to the units that are intended for the DXF or DWG. I was also able to do "Original Size" and then change the units on the import upon a second try, but

When you recieve the Dxf file or any CAD file, please know what is the unit they have created it. When you open them from illustrator, before you open them, make a new document with the specific unit. and then try to open the dxf file.

Thanks for this thread-caused me to go back to Onshape and work out what was going on when I export as DXF. I have solved my issue by going right back to the drawing options when creating an Onshape drawing. Select ISO units rather than ANSI. DXF imports to Illustrator as correct size (NB all drawings constructed using millimeters.

That did not solve the problem. First of all, if you have selected Original Size, I don't think the Scales setting would matter. But either way, no matter what unit value I pick - points, pixels, inches - it still always comes in super tiny.

That is not the answer. First off, as I originally stated, this specific file opened up without problems 2 days before I updated to Illustrator 2018. Second, when the dialog opens it is set with a value of 1 for units and set to Points. I have then selected Scale by and set it to 100%. I have tried selecting Millimeters, pixels, and inches, and they all open the same way.

mjulson1 is right. Choosing "scale to fit" does make it visible, but the scale is likely important and lost (or at least not obvious to the user). I don't think Illustrator is handling the situation wrong, but it could be handled better.

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