topic Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks? in Revit MEP Forum

Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 15:40:20 GMT

I have a pipe route with mechanical equipment modeled using a combination of RFAs and ITMs. I'm trying to export the model into some sort of solid body that can be opened in solidworks but best I have been able to do is get an SAT imported, but the pipe is missing from the model, it just has a bunch of flat surfaces at the ends of each pipe section.

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

ToanDN — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:16:58 GMT

Try this option (attached).

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:24:46 GMT

I have tried that. I tried STL Exporter for Revit and that is producing a model that will import, but also no pipe. But I used the surfaces it imported to tie down my center lines for the pipe. While that is a little time consuming to do, it was working better than just trying to build it from the ground up.... till i found out the scale was way off. 1/12th of the scale to be exact(24" pipe was 2"), and scaling the bodies only made them larger without spacing them out.

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

ToanDN — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:31:11 GMT

Not sure what is going on but I can export pipes to SAT just fine.

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:31:43 GMT

Just fixed the scaling issue... changed the units to fractional inches from feet. Still no pipe, but it's useable. Now I just need to figure out how to get the plane to change. Solidworks Y axis is up vs Revit Z axis so everything is on it's side

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:32:21 GMT

Are you exporting Fabrication pipe or RFA pipe families?

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

ToanDN — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:37:15 GMT

Revit pipes. I see Fabrication parts won't export to SAT.

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 19:41:52 GMT

Yeah, this whole job has been done using fabrication parts and definitely not starting over

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

ToanDN — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 20:00:35 GMT

I think the reason is that fabrication parts are originally built as polymeshes, not 3d solids. So, if you export them to SAT format, they won't come out at all. If you export them to DWG, they do come out as polymeshes. They are visible in AutoCAD but will show as two circles and a line path since the mesh is too dense. I guess that is how you see them when export to STL.

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 20:24:19 GMT

Is there any way to take the 3d dxf and convert that over to a format I can use?

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

ToanDN — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 20:37:55 GMT

You will need to convert polyface meshes to 3d solids. Do a google search you may find some apps. Below is one but I have no idea if it will work or not. Never tried myself.

https://www.automapki.com/tutorials/126-convert-polyface-mesh-to-solid-in-autocad.html

Have you tried export to IFC and import IFC in Solidworks?

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

kyleQUEBM — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 21:47:39 GMT

Doesn't seem to work at all. SW just hangs up opening the IFC file

Re: Exporting STL, SAT or other to be used in Solidworks?

pawel.romaniuk — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 09:05:53 GMT

@kyleQUEBM have you tried suggested workflow with smaller project, please test it with 2-3 FAB pipes./ducts etc

How to convert Revit RFA or RVT file into a format usable by Solidworks
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-convert-Revit-RFA-file-into-file-which-is-usable-by-Solidworks.html