Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I was given a STEP file that was created in Solidwoks which when opened in Inventor 12' is a surface.

The surface can be successfully thickened after it is stitched, prior to stitching it fails due to it's complex obround, tapered, bell shape. However, because thicken only thickens perpendicular to the surface I end up with a lot of unusable ends with crazy angles and in many cases additional phantom surfaces which I cannot cut off or sketch on because they don’t really exist. Thickening has not been a serviceable option to this point.

All other techniques I try when making this model from scratch fail or do not match the original surface. Measuring the surface is difficult because the only measurements we get are the lengths of the loops, no radial measurements. Additionally, when I enter the solid I created from scratch into an assembly (whether it’s geometrically correct or not), I cannot constrain it, I can’t click on anything but the working planes – no surface, face or edge can be picked on the solid itself.  

Can anyone offer up some suggestions for making surfaces into workable solids? Is there anything I should do different? Is the sequence I am using incorrect? Can anyone walk thru the order of operations they use to successfully create a solid from a surface?

Thanks for your help.

Attached is a screen shot of the surface as it opens from the STEP.

[#2]

Can you attach the original STEP (or better yet the sldprt) here?

http://home.pct.edu/~jmather/AU2008/ML205-1P%20Mather.pdf

[#3]

I am trying to get an answer to that question. It's a privacy concern so I need to go thru the proper channels. 

I'm getting a SW 2012 evaluation package tomorrow to see if I will have better luck using the SLDPRT from the customer. That's only for a peace of mind though, my deliverable is still Inventor, so I need to make it work with what I currently have. Thanks for the link, I'll go thru that and see if I can make any progress.

[#4]

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rmconley wrote:

I'm getting a SW 2012 evaluation package tomorrow to see if I will have better luck using the SLDPRT from the customer. ...

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Inventor will read sldprt file directly (but without feature tree).

[#5]

If it comes in w/o the feature tree, what is it? Is it just an object? Can I add features to it such as tapped holes and make cuts?

I'd just try this but I don't have the SLDPRT yet as I didn't know I could open it in Inventor. Would you say it is a better starting point than a STEP file?

[#6]

If it is a valid solid body it will import as a solid.

You can edit the solid just like editing any other solid (but will not have previous history).

If you need a history tree for some reason you can download the free Feature Recognition add-in from http://labs.autodesk.com  (will work for Revolves, Extrudes, Holes...)

[#7]

I have the SLDPRT now. I'm not having any luck importing/opening it in Inventor. Should I be able to just open it?

[#8]

Depends on what version of Inventor you have and what version the SolidWorks file is.

Inventor releases come out after SolidWorks, so Inventor 2012 will read a SWx 2011 file (not sure if SP1.1 updates that sequence for 2013).

What version of Inventor are you using.

What version of SWx was used to create the sldprt file?

But based on your original screen shot it doesn't look like there were any solids in the sldprt file saved as STEP.

Let me try an experiment with a sldprt file of a surface body opening in Inventor.

Back in a minute.

OK, I gave it a test.  Inventor opens sldprt file that has only surface body just fine.

(test was with SWx 2012 and Inventor 2013)

If you are running earlier version of Inventor I think free Inventor Fusion 2013 will open sldprt files http://labs.autodesk.com

My experiment with Fusion did not go so well.  I did not get solid or surface file open.