When exporting to STEP file, all Body names and Folders are lost

[pangelotti]

Hello, When I export to a STEP file, all of the Names for each Body are gone, and the individual folders are gone as well. It is just one folder with a list of Bodies in numerical order. Is there a way to export to a STEP file and maintain the body names and the folders they were in?

[jhackney1972]

If your assembly is composed of Components, a STEP file export will maintain the names of the Components.  I am not quite sure what you mean by Folder?

[pangelotti]

Here's a screenshot from the Original Project File

And this if from the exported STEP file

 

[pangelotti]

It looks like from your answer, I need to put the bodies into components.  Is that correct?  Sorry I am new at this, do you have any advice?

[pangelotti]

Update.  I created components, and those Component Names transferred.  But the Bodies that were named under those components are generically named Body 1, Body 2 and so on.

 

[pangelotti]

Is there any way to retain those Body names when you export to a STEP file?

[jhackney1972]

I do not know anyway of retaining the Bodies names in the STEP file export.  I see what you are talking about when you mention Folders.  Bodies are grouped using folders and as far as I know these folders are also not copies when exporting to a STEP file. 

Correction: The Body folder is retained, under the component, but the Body names are lost.  Below is a screen capture from a STEP file exported from a Fusion 360 file containing Components.

[TheCADWhisperer]

You did not do this correctly.

Attach your file here and I will demonstrate correct technique.

File>Export your *.f3d file to your local drive and then Attach it here to a Reply?

[bpetersen9BTH4]

Any updates on this?

are you able to provide an example of exporting to a .step file and keeping the bodies names?

Thanks 

[nocheinerunde]

I am resurrecting this thread, because Fusion360 cancelled the hobbyist/private user subscription in Europe.

The other very bad thing is that updates after March 2025 will not run on OpenCore patched Macs - this is ridicilous,  my 2017 iMac is completely up to the task.

Anyway, byebye Fusion360, welcome FreeCAD - and the urgent need to migrate all designs that accumulated over six years.

Things to look after when exporting to STEP:

I have designs with a plethora of variants of the parts, often detailed up the the tiniest screw and even with shaped borethreads.

One design has 742 Bodies, many of them very complicated, as they were supposed to mill a complete housing out of a block of Aluminium.

In the final version, maybe 50 bodies of the design is visible, The rest is not.

When exporting from such a design, only the visible bodies will be exported! Also only the visible bodies will turn to components!

And you'll have to do this, to keep the body names, as already mentioned.

So, if you intend to archive all variants,  make a copy of your design and toggle all parts visible!

Then modify them to components and export. (BTW, unfortunately, canvases are not exported.)

Turning bodies to components is pretty ugly in Fusion, as you now have subfolders, and in those the bodies.

But FreeCAD does not seem to make a difference between bodies and components.

Afer import, the list of parts (again) looks like a body structure, with all names retained.

Letters in foreign languages like ä, ö, ü (I'm German) will result in an ascii-mess, but this can be fixed.

Fusion is pretty good in keeping files small. The file  mentioned above with 742 bodies is about 70mB large.

The exported STEP is about 1.9GB!

Don't panic when importing such a huge file into FreeCAD. On my Mac with 4.2gHz, I did watch the spinning beachball for at least 25  minutes.

But the fans were running, nothing froze and finally the large STEP imported into FreeCAD.

After saving, what was about 70mB in Fusion is now 600mB in FreeCAD.

There is a FreeCAD addon named "InventorLoader" that promises to import Fusion's .f3d files directly.

It does not! The import returns errors. I tried several designs,even one with only one body.

Also trying to directly import into FreeCAD the .smb file inside the .f3d container did not work.

So STEP/STP seems to be the safe route. Material properties are lost, colors retained.

But I write the material/alloy into the body name anyway...