Going from Inventor to VRML

[Will_Cochrane]

Hello All,

I did a search on the forums and never saw a solution to this, although it could have been a bad search criteria I used.

I am trying to take a part or assembly developed using Inventor and transferring it across to a Zcorp printer. Now this is easy enough when I want monochrome or want to spend a day painting it in the Zcorp software but its not very practical. So we are looking at a way in which we can color the model in inventor, transfer this to another software product and then output a vrml file. Does anyone have any suggestions on software that can do this?

We have tried a translator software but have had no success with it. I have tried trial versions of alias, sketchbook and publisher (all Autodesk) with no luck. Although alias design can output .zpr it does not appear to import the colors of the inventor model across, is there possibly a solution to that? Otherwise I was going to try 3DS Max but I believe that someone tried that and failed.

Although it maybe possible to import the inventor file without colors and then color it in another package then output vrml, we do not consider that as being feasible as too many people would need to learn how to do this. Whereas using another package to import then export is faster for us.

All help is appreciated,

Thanks,

Will

[whunter]

Will;

You can try to export to XGL (or ZGL, it's just the compressed format) and then use AccuTrans 3D http://www.micromouse.ca/ to convert to VRML. 30 days free trial, and it costs only $20.

Let us know if it works, if you don't mind?

--

William

[aargear]

Please, see

http://www.cadstudio.cz/vrmlout

[Will_Cochrane]

Hi William,

Sorry for not responding sooner. I remember trying your suggestion but I cannot remember what happened. It didn't work, I think there was possibly parts of the model missing when I imported it into the package.

Sorry for not being anymore help.

Will

[whunter]

There is another way...

Open your Inventor file in 3ds Max (you'll have this if your Inventor Suite is up to date, i.e., v 2012), Save As (Export) a VRML file. That's it.

Screenshots of a Bracket Assembly (IAM file) in Inventor and 3ds Max included. The resulting VRML file is shown in MeshLab.

--

William

[weiser]

Hi,

@whunter Is it possible to export material-textures and labels created in Inventor too?

Though I haven't installed 3Ds Max I would like to aks before installing this package too.

Best Regards

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! There is a tool on Inventor App store capable of exporting to VRML. I have not tried it but you can try it and see if it works for you.

https://apps.autodesk.com/INVNTOR/en/Detail/Index?id=9055853840791128226&appLang=en&os=Win32_64

Many thanks!

[weiser]

Thanks @johnsonshiue for the hint ....

I've already downloaded a trial. Unfortunately the trial version does not allow any color export. When visiting the homepage I found that texture-export is nor supported ...

So I have to keep on searching 😞