re cad assembly 'mates' or 'constraints' maintained in custom application

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Hello, you might know this or someone that can help. For a custom simulation project how can the CAD assembly mates be maintained? As I understand you need to have the exact geometric constraints engine of the CAD application (which is impossible as they are all custom) or link to the engine by the API somehow. I read that SHARP VR claims it has direct data transfer and can read any standard CAD system and maintain the constraints. But I doubt this and that it is referring to the 2d geometric constraints and not the part to part mates. Anyway any ideas on how to handle this as I'm sure everyone creating a sim will come against this problem. Cheers, Andrey Pavlov