Property mapping between Inventor and Solidworks

[Anonymous]

@JDMather specifically because I know you use/teach both (and I've found your hints very useful over the years)

I currently have a project that we are designing in Inventor, which I'm trained and experienced with, but the customer requires (and our Business people agreed to) providing them with solidworks models/assemblies/drawings.  We're still arguing about drawings, but that's an aside.

The conversion process is pretty slick, as far as parts/models go, but I have no training or experience with soldiworks, so I'm stumbing around a bit.

The customer has provided us with templates to use which include custom properties.  I'd like to do the input of these in Inventor and have the values map to the existing properties in the Solidworks template when I do the conversion - is this possible?  Everywhere I read says this is supposed to happen (or at least "new" properties are supposed to be copied) but it doesn't seem to be happening.  What am I missing?

Both Inventor and Solidworks are 2018.

Any help would be appreciated.  Including commiserating about sales people making promises that the technical people have to somehow deliver.  The timelines on this project are incredibly tight also.

[SBix26]

Unfortunately, he's not available.

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Sam B
Inventor Pro 2020.0.1 | Windows 7 SP1
LinkedIn

[Frederick_Law]

I know standard properties can be mapped.

Not sure about custom properties.

How will you transfer from IV to SW?

STEP?

Provide example of properties you want to transfer.

[Cadmanto]

I use both softwares.  What I can tell you is Solidworks will open Inventor parts/assemblies and Inventor will open SW parts/assemblies.  But, they convert them and make them into dumb solids.

There used to be an app in the Autodesk library according to this thread that would allow batch import of properties from one to the other.  Apparently it is not available any more.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/import-properties-from-solidworks-to-inventor-batch-mo...

The properties from either will not come in directly without some third party intervention.

While Inventor has the Ilogic browser that makes accessing the properties of the model easier, Solidworks has the Property tab builder which does similar in that world.

Not sure if this helps you.

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2020

[swalton]

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@Cadmanto wrote:

I use both softwares.  What I can tell you is Solidworks will open Inventor parts/assemblies and Inventor will open SW parts/assemblies.  But, they convert them and make them into dumb solids.

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This is a key point.  Does your customer expect a full feature tree for the parts and a full assembly tree with constraints for the assembly models?  If so, you will need to use Solidworks for the modeling.  I don't think that Inventor or Soildworks are able to convert each other's drawing files.

In our consulting experience, when a client asks for the work product to be delivered in a specific CAD format, they are expecting native files with full feature trees.  That way they can use the files in their own internal processes/workflows without issues.

There is a reason we have more combined seats of Creo, Inventor and Solidworks than we have employees....

[mcgyvr]

If the customer is requesting native Solidworks files then do everything in Solidworks..

Thats the only way it will work properly..

Thats the life of contract design/manufacturing firms.. You often need to keep multiple software subscriptions active to meet customer requirements.. 

[Anonymous]

No can do - I don't have time to learn to use solidworks, it isn't compatible with our proprietary (re: terrible) document system, and the customer is already aware they are getting converted, dumb solids, and 2D line conversions of the drawings.  All of the actual drafting people involved objected strenuously, but managers on both sides of the conversation just waved their hands and said "it will be fine" and wrote a contract.

FYI I kind of made it work - if you import and select "body" rather than features, and the custom properties are created in Inventor, but not in Solidworks, it will create them in SW with the correct data.

I need to do some testing with the CAD people at the customer, but I think that will meet their needs.

We are not a "design" outfit - we normally deliver the actual machine and a drawing set in PDF format, and that's that.  This is outside of our normal function, hence the panic on my part.

[liang_chen]

When import SW part and assembly files into Inventor, the file properties can be mapped to Inventor file properties. You can customize it in the import options, and it is only for file properties. The SW geometries will imported as body without parameter definition.

I also check whether SW can read the file properties back from Inventor file. Seems some properties lost. I am using Inventor 2019 and SW 2019. 

[Anonymous]

Mapping custom properties SW -> Inventor works as I'd expect.

Mapping custom properties Inventor -> SW will copy the values if the properties don't exist in the SW template, IF you use "anycad" or the equivalent, but makes them read only, even if you "break the link".

My solution is to make "throwaway" properties in a custom inventor template, import the file, break the link, copy the data from the temporary props to the existing ones in the template, then delete the temporary properties.

If anyone has a better solution, I'm listening...

p.s. I'll be doing the copy/delete etc. with a macro of some kind.