Inventor to Solidworks and the other way around

[Anonymous]

Good afternoon,

Within the company i work for, there are several departments. To make life as hard as possible, department 1 is working with solidworks and department 2 is working with autodesk Inventor :). 

We are searching for a solution on the following question: how can we go from inventor to solidworks and the otherway around, with our models? We know that we can use STEP. or other file types, but with all these file types you will get a solid body, without the features. Is it possible to convert the features as well??

Thanks in advance for the response!!

Lars de Jonge

[swalton · Accepted solution]

Out of the box, there is no way to get a feature tree for Inventor models in Solidworks or vice-versa.  2d drawings are not compatible either.

@johnsonshiue has mentioned software here: 

https://www.iti-global.com/gotoinventor

I've never used it and I don't know the price, but it might be worth checking out.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for your reply!

I'am going to look further into the software that u mentioned. I think that best solution is to say solidworks or inventor for the company, but because of financial reasons, we first want to look into other options.

Thank you once more, and have a nice rest of your day!

[andrewiv]

I also deal with this situation of having both Inventor and Solidworks in use within our company.  What we have adopted is opening the native Solidworks file in Inventor so it uses the anycad functionality to keep it linked to the original file.  That way it can still be edited in Solidworks and the changes will show up in Inventor.  If a change needs to happen that you only want to show in Inventor then the direct edit tools can be used, or adding additional features.  This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but this is what we do in my company.

[Anonymous]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your adivce! What do you think of the inventor "direct editing" of a solid body? Does it work sufficient within your company?

[andrewiv]

It works fine once you get used to it, just like any other feature it can be tricky until you figure it out.  We don't need to use it too often.  Usually if we need something changed on a solidworks file the change happens in solidworks.

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I think that best solution is to say solidworks or inventor for the company, but because of financial reasons, we first want to look into other options.

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As stated there isn't the ability to just take a solidworks file and have its native "feature tree" and be able to modify it easily in Inventor using that native feature tree then be able to send that file right back to a solidworks user who can see the modified/new file tree and continue working without issue.  

Each time you transfer from one your "feature tree" is essentially lost.

If departments just need to use models from one department and not modify them then its not a big deal (just use step files or whatever).. But if you require back and forth and each department will change the files then just give up now and consolidate on one program. You will just be transferring cost from one to another.. (Stopping one subscription and starting up another). There is some cost differences I'm sure but you will spend FAR more time/money trying to work together (if each department needs to modify the files back and forth)

I would think that your parts should still be "owned" by each department and the others can "suggest markups/modifications" but those modifications should still be performed by the "owning" department and then just a step file pushed back and forth..